ont flap of the tent. She heard voices of other men.
They paid not too much attention to her at first. Big Aleck, their
leader, went on with hurried orders.

"We got to get out of here in not more'n an hour or so," said he. "The
Johns'll come. I fixed a couple dozen stacks of hay for them."

"See anybody down below, Aleck?" asked a voice which Mary Warren
recognized as different from the others she had heard. And then some
low question was asked, to which Big Aleck replied.

"Well, I'll take her along with me, when I go out, far as that's
concerned," said he. "She says she's Sim Gage's housekeeper! Huh!"

"But suppose she gets away and squeals on us?" spoke a voice.

"She can't get away. Let's go eat."

She was close enough to where they sat eating and drinking to hear all
that was said, and they spoke with utter disregard of her presence.
She never had heard such language in her life, nor known that such men
lived. Never yet had she so fully taken home to herself the actual
presence of a Government, of a country, never before known what threats
against that country actually might mean. An enemy? Why, here was the
enemy still, entrenched inside the lines of victorious and
peace-abiding America--trusting, foolish, blind America, which had
accepted anything a human riff-raff sneeringly and cynically had
offered her in return for her own rich generosity! Mary Warren began
to see, suddenly, the tremendous burden of duty laid on every man and
every woman of America--the lasting and enduring and continuous duty of
a post-bellum patriotism, that new and terrible thing; that sweet and
splendid thing which alone could safeguard the country that had fought
for liberty so splendidly, so unselfishly.

"If they ever run across us in here with the goods on us--good-night!"
hesitated a voice. "I don't like to carry this here cyanide--we got
enough for all the sheep and cattle in Montana."

"Our lawyers'll take care of us if we get arrested," said Big Aleck
indifferently.

"Yes, but we mightn't get arrested--these here ranch Johns is handy
with rope and lead."

"Ach, no danger," argued Aleck. "It's safer than to blow up a armory
or a powder mill, or even a public building--and we done all that,
while the war was on. We'll give 'em Force! This Republic be
damned--there is no republic but the republic of Man!"

These familiar doctrines seemed to excite the applause usual among
hearers of this sort. There was