ening than he earned it by day. And always overhung the contractors
this peril of a camp quarrel.

Almost before Conrad had seized the spirit of the incident, it was
swelled by the accession of other disputants. Five seconds' thoughtful
scrutiny warned him that to attempt to quell it without assistance was
taking an unjustifiable risk. Small groups were rising angrily
everywhere about the river bottom, and crowding to the fringes of the
altercation. Alone, he might fail, and it were better then not to have
tried. By the time he could reach the scene half the camp would
probably be involved.

For he saw at a glance that this was no personal squabble but one of
the infrequent but always impending race feuds.

He jerked his head about to see if Torrance knew. But the shack door
up at the trestle was empty; Torrance and Tressa would be in the
kitchen cleaning up. Thereupon Conrad set off at a run up the sloping
path, watching intermittently the angry scene below.

A hundred yards from the grade he put his fingers to his lips and
whistled. Torrance came instantly to the door. He saw the fight, saw
Conrad's beckoning hand, and, without hat or coat, dashed out to the
grade. But even as he leaped the rails his mood altered: pulling up,
he strolled leisurely on down the path.

Conrad was intent on the waxing conflict. Group by group it was
extending. He realised the wisdom of the instinct that had sent him
for help--if the affray had not already passed control. There were
only the two of them to count on. Koppy, whose duty it was to
forestall such conflicts, was nowhere in sight; and anyway Conrad had
learned not to trust the Pole. Casting hasty eyes upward toward the
underforeman's shack topping the promontory overlooking the camp, he
fancied a dim movement in the darkness of the interior. Unless his
eyes deceived him, Koppy was out of the reckoning in case of need.
Irritated, Conrad swung about impatiently. Torrance was sauntering
downward, filling his pipe.

"Here," the foreman called sharply, "we must stop that, and quick."

"It's only a fight," drawled Torrance.

Conrad's face darkened with disgust. "Don't cut your own throat. You
don't seem to have heard of where these fights sometimes
lead--Swanson's, for instance, and Tillman's, to mention only last
year's. You'd be in a fine mess with one of those on your hands in
late July, wouldn't you?"

"Let it go for a couple of minutes longer, Adrian