in the light of
day. Beyond and at the feet of the clustered men spiteful spurts of dust
leaped high in air, then drifted and sank, to be replaced by others.
Faint, meaningless cries wove through the drifting crash of rifles,
blossoming tufts sprang up again and again from boulders near and far.
Answering cries flew back from the opening cluster of men, other tufts
tongued with yellow flame sprang out from their levelled guns. Now and
then a man spun around and dropped, a huddled grey on the spurting sand.

It was not in man long to endure the sheltered fire. Dragging their
wounded, Jack Haskins's gang again converged, and headed in wild retreat
for the office. The opposing tufts came nearer, and now and then a dark
form straightened and advanced to another shelter, or was hidden from
sight by a bubble of fleecy white that burst from his shoulder. Close at
the heels of the fleeing men the spiteful spurts followed fast, till
they died out in the thud of smitten logs and the crashing glass of the
office.

The answering fire of the beleaguered men died to silence. The dark,
distant forms grew daring, ran from shelter and clustered at the foot of
the slide, across the trail from the Blue Goose. Rambling shots, yells
of defiance and triumph, broke from the gathering strikers. The shafts
of sunlight had swept down the mountain, smiting hard the polished
windows of the Blue Goose that blazed and flamed in their fierce glory.

Suddenly the clustered throng of strikers broke and fled. Cries of
terror pierced the air.

"The cables! The cables!"

Overhead the black webs were sinking and rising with spiteful snaps that
whirled the buckets in wild confusion and sent their heavy loads of ore
crashing to the earth, five hundred feet below. Then, with a rushing,
dragging sweep, buckets and cables whirled downward. Full on the Blue
Goose the tearing cables fell, dragging it to earth, a crushed and
broken mass.

Morrison's emissaries had done their work well. The tram-house at the
mine had been blown up. They had accomplished more than he had hoped
for. Pierre was in the bar-room when the cables fell. He had no time to
escape, even had he seen or known.

Momentarily forgetful, the strikers swarmed around the fallen building,
tearing aside crushed timbers, tugging at the snarled cable, if
perchance some of their own were within the ruins. There came the
spiteful spat of a solitary bullet, then a volley. With a yell of
terror, th