unately, they had in abundance.
The company had long since seen to that. Nolan already had set "Blue
Lips" to work building a fire in the big kitchen stove at the office
and setting the kettle to boil. Coffee, hard bread, and bacon, with
canned pork and beans, were served to all hands, about five at a time,
and then, with Nolan to station the watchers on the south and west
fronts, George and his five stole out on the northward slope, alert,
cautious, and silent, moving only a few paces at a time.

Afar down in the depths of the valley the clustered lights of the
excited town shone brilliantly through the gloaming. Every now and then
through the surrounding silence came the bark of dogs, the shrill
voices of clamoring women, and occasionally a burst of howls and yells.
Some rude orator was still preaching death and destruction to a more
than half-drunken gang, urging them on to the aid of their brethren up
the levels above. All about the Silver Shield, however, was ominously
still. Over on opposite heights and down in stray gulches could be seen
the flitting lights of rival establishments, and away to the west,
around the base of the mountain where the railway squirmed by the side
of the tortuous stream, two or three locomotive-engines, on stalled
trains, had been whistling long and hard for aid. All that was useless.
Above for a mile, below for a league, the track had been torn up in
places, and down along Silver Run, toward Hatch's Cove and the
foot-hills, culverts and cuts had been mined and blown out for five
miles more. No sheriff's posses from below, no hated Pinkertons, no
despised militia, no dreaded regulars, should come to the aid of Silver
Shield till there was nothing left worth saving.

And up here on the northward flank of the bold, rounded heights that
overhung the town, and harbored now both besieged and besiegers,
invisible to each other and to the lower world in the darkness, Geordie
Graham lay crouching behind a little bowlder, every sense on edge, for
to his left front, a little higher up, he could distinctly hear low,
gruff voices, confused murmurings and movements, sounds that told him
that, relying on their overwhelming numbers, the mob was coming slowly,
surely, down to carry out their threat to fire the buildings and to
finish as they pleased the wretched defenders.

It was barely nine o'clock. Below him, perhaps twenty yards downhill,
was his nearest sentry. Above him, and a little retired, wa