you damned please with him? Not much."

Marshall Sothern merely shook his head and moved on, thrusting Madden
to one side with his heavy shoulder. He was carrying Drennen as one
might carry a baby, an arm about the shoulders, an arm under the knees.
Men offered to help him but he paid no heed to them. Leonine the man
always looked; to-day he looked the lion bearing off a wounded whelp to
its den.

Expostulating, Madden dogged his heels, the rest following. Lemarc and
Sefton, speaking together, had dropped far behind; Hasbrook was close
to Madden's elbow. So they passed down the street. Ygerne Bellaire,
standing now in front of Marquette's, watched them wonderingly.

Sothern came first to the dugout. The door being open, he passed in
without stopping. He laid the inert form down gently and came back to
the door.

"Well?" he demanded, his steady eyes going to Madden.

Madden laughed sneeringly.

"If you think I'm going to stand for a high-handed play like this," he
jeered, "you're damned well mistaken. You're not the only man who's
got an interest in him. He doesn't belong to you, old man."

"They'd have killed him if it hadn't been for me," returned Sothern
imperturbably. "Until he's on his feet and in his mind again he does
belong to me. We haven't the pleasure of knowing each other very well,
Charlie. But I can give you my word that when I say a thing I mean it.
If you don't believe it . . . start something."

He stepped outside, closing the door after him softly. He brought out
his pipe, knocked the dead tobacco from it and filled it afresh,
lighting it before Madden and Hasbrook, consulting together in an
undertone, had found anything to say. His eyes were calm and steady;
there was even a hint of a smile in them as they rested upon Madden's
eager, angry face. There had been no threat in his last words. But he
had meant them.

There was but one door to the dugout; it was closed, and more than
that, Marshall Sothern stood calmly in front of it. Drennen was inside
and he was going to stay there. Madden muttered something; Sothern
lifted his brows enquiringly and Madden did not repeat. The situation
being neither without interest or humour, some of the men laughed.
Madden considered swiftly: Drennen was unconscious; Sothern could do
nothing with him immediately. He drew Hasbrook aside and the two went
slowly up the street.

Sothern beckoned a man he knew in the crowd, a little fellow nam