tly
preparing another section, was slowly pushed to the new front for
another advance.

"It is like clockwork," was Miss Alicia's enthusiastic comment. "Did you
invent it, Mr. Ford?"

Now the combination of flat-car bolting-table, and the shifting and
laying by sections, was Ford's invention, but he modestly stood from
under.

"Frisbie gets the medal," he said. "It's all in the drill--every man
knowing what he has to do, and doing it at the proper moment. I'd give
something if I had Dick's knack in detail organizing."

She looked up, laughing. "You have the funniest way of ducking to cover
if you think a bit of honest appreciation is coming your way, Mr. Ford.
You know you told Mr. Frisbie how to do it."

"Did I? I suppose it wouldn't be polite to contradict you."

"Or any use. Is Mr. Frisbie here now?--Oh, yes; there he is." And then,
in a half-awed whisper: "Who is that dreadful, Grand-Opera-villain
looking man he is talking to?"

Ford's eyes sought and found Frisbie. He was standing a little apart
from the turmoil, talking to a man on horseback; a man with half-closed,
beady, black eyes, drooping mustaches, and a face reptilian in its
repulsiveness.

"That is 'Mexican George'; the MacMorrogh Brothers' 'killer'," said Ford
evenly. "Have you ever heard of a professional man-killer, Miss Adair; a
man whose calling is that of a hired assassin?"

She shuddered. "You are jesting, I know. But the word fits his face so
accurately. I saw him lounging about the store at the camp yesterday,
and it gave me the creeping shivers every time I looked at him. Do you
ever have such instantaneous and unreasoning hatreds at first sight?"

"Now and then; yes. But I was not jesting about Mexican George. He is
precisely what the word implies; is hired for it and paid for it.
Nominally, he guards the commissary and stores, and is the paymaster's
armed escort. Really, it is his duty to shoot down any desperate laborer
who, in the MacMorroghs' judgment, needs to be killed out of the way."

"Mercy!" Miss Alicia was shuddering again. "What hideously primitive
conditions! What is this terrible man doing out here?"

"Oh, he is a free lance; comes and goes as he pleases. No, he's not
quarreling with Dick"--answering her look of anxiety.

"How do you know he isn't?"

Ford laughed. "Because Dick wouldn't let him get that near. He
knows--Hello; I wonder what your good uncle wants of us."

Mr. Colbrith was standing up in his place i