s ordinary contained passivity. But always, though evidently in
a white heat of rage and given to violent action and decision, he
had retained the clearest command of his faculties, issuing
coherent and dreaded orders to those about him. Now he bad become
a raging wild beast. And for the spectators the sight had all the
horror of the unprecedented.

But the younger man, too, had gradually heated to the point where
his ordinary careless indifference could give off sparks. The
interview had been baffling, the threats real and unjust, the turn
of affairs when Virginia Albret entered the room most exasperating
on the side of the undesirable and unforeseen. In foiled escape,
in thwarted expedient, his emotions had been many times excited,
and then eddied back on themselves. The potentialities of as blind
an anger as that of Galen Albret were in him. It only needed a
touch to loose the flood. The physical threat of a blow supplied
that touch. As the two men faced each other both were ripe for the
extreme of recklessness.

But while Galen Albret looked to nothing less than murder, the
Free-Trader's individual genius turned to dead defiance and
resistance of will. While Galen Albret's countenance reflected the
height of passion, Trent was as smiling and cool and debonair as
though he had at that moment received from the older man an
extraordinary and particular favor. Only his eyes shot a baleful
blue flame, and his words, calmly enough delivered, showed the
extent to which his passion had cast policy to the winds.

"Don't go too far! I warn you!" said he. As though the words had
projected him bodily forward, Galen Albret sprang to deliver his
blow. The Free Trader ducked rapidly, threw his shoulder across
the middle of the older man's body, and by the very superiority of
his position forced his antagonist to give ground. That the
struggle would have then continued body to body there can be no
doubt, had it not been for the fact that the Factor's retrogressive
movement brought his knees sharply against the edge of a chair
standing near the side of the table. Albret lost his balance,
wavered, and finally sat down violently. Ned Trent promptly pinned
him by the shoulder into powerless immobility. Me-en-gan had
possessed himself of the fallen pistol, but beyond keeping a
generally wary eye out for dangerous developments, did not offer to
interfere. Your Indian is in such a crisis a disciplinarian, and
he ha