ere fairly on the right of way, then he called down to them.

"Halt, there! you two. This is corporation property."

"Not much it ain't!" retorted one of the trespassers gruffly. "It's
the drain-way from our placer up yonder."

"What are you going to do up there at this time of night?"

"None o' your blame business!" was the explosive counter-shot.

"Perhaps it isn't," said Adams mildly. "Just the same, I'm thirsting
to know. Call it vulgar curiosity if you like."

"All right, you can know, and be cussed to you. We're goin' to work
our claim. Got anything to say against it?"

"Oh! no," rejoined Adams; and when the twain had disappeared in the
upper darkness he went down the grade with Branagan and took his place
on the man-loaded flats for the run to the construction camp, thinking
more of the lately-arrived car with its complement of armed men than
of the two miners who had calmly announced their intention of working
a placer claim on a high mountain, without water, and in the dead of
winter! By which it will be seen that Mr. Morton P. Adams,
C. E. M. I. T. Boston, had something yet to learn in the matter of
practical field work.

By the time Ah Foo had served him his solitary supper in the dinkey he
had quite forgotten the incident of the mysterious placer miners.
Worse than this, it had never occurred to him to connect their
movements with the Rajah's plan of campaign. On the other hand, he was
thinking altogether of the carload of armed men, and trying to devise
some means of finding out how they were to be employed in furthering
the Rajah's designs.

The means suggested themselves after supper, and he went alone over to
Argentine to spend a half-hour in the bar of the dance-hall listening
to the gossip of the place. When he had learned what he wanted to
know, he forthfared to meet Winton at the incoming train.

"We are in for it now," he said, when they had crossed the creek to
the dinkey and the Chinaman was bringing Winton's belated supper. "The
Rajah has imported a carload of armed mercenaries, and he is going to
clean us all out to-morrow: arrest everybody from the gang foremen
up."

Winton's eyebrows lifted. "So? that is a pretty large contract. Has he
men enough to do it?"

"Not so many men. But they are sworn-in deputies, with the sheriff of
Ute County in command--a posse, in fact. So he has the law on his
side."

"Which is more than he had when he set a thug on me this afternoon at
Carbonat