none of my business that you're camping around
here, but up there is railroad property, and that _is_ my business. If
you show your faces inside the station again or pass out any more booze
to McGrew, I'll wire headquarters and have you run in; and somehow,
though I've only met you once or twice, I don't fancy you're anxious to
touch head-on with the authorities." He looked at the two steadily for
an instant, while they stared back half angrily, half sheepishly.
"That's fair warning, isn't it?" he ended, as he turned and began to
retrace his steps to the station. "You'd better take it--you won't get
a second one."

They cursed him when they found their tongues, and did it heartily,
interwoven with threats and savage jeers that followed him halfway to
the embankment. But their profanity did not cloak the fact that, to a
certain extent, the Kid's words were worthy of consideration.

The extent was two nights--that night, and the next one.

On the third night, or rather, far on in the early morning hours, the
Kid, upstairs, awakened from sleep, sat suddenly up in his bunk. A
wild outburst of drunken song, accompanied by fists banging time on the
table, reached him--then an abashed hush, through which the click of
the sounder came to him and he read it mechanically--the despatcher at
Big Cloud was making a meeting point for two trains at the Bend, forty
miles away, nothing to do with Angel Forks. Came then a rough
oath--another--and a loud, brawling altercation.

The Kid's lips thinned. He sprang out of his bunk, pulled on shirt and
trousers, and went softly down the stairs. They didn't hear him, they
were too drunk for that; and they didn't see him--until he was fairly
inside the room; and then for a moment they leered at him, suddenly
silent, in a silly, owl-like way.

There was an anger upon the Kid, a seething passion, that showed in his
bloodless face and quivering lips. He stood for an instant motionless,
glancing around the office; the table from the other room had been
dragged in; on either side of it sat Harvey and Lansing; at the end,
within reach of the key, sat Dan McGrew, swaying tipsily back and
forth, cards in hand; under the table was an empty bottle, another had
rolled into a corner against the wall; and on the table itself were two
more bottles amongst greasy, scattered cards, one almost full, the
other still unopened.

"S'all right, Charlie," hiccoughed McGrew blandly. "S'all right--jus'