n Steve's
hand.

"Back up there," shouted Packard. "Stand still while you listen to me."

They hesitated, wondering. A man growled something, his voice
deep-throated and truculent. Another man laughed. The forms filling
the doorway began a slow bulging outward as other forms behind crowded
upon them.

Within Woods's cabin there was a little noise.

"You men are leaving to-day," said Steve hastily. "Just as fast as you
can pull your freight. Blenham and Woods are going with you. All told
there are above a dozen of you and only one of me. But I've got
Woods's gun and Blenham's and I happen to mean business. This is my
outfit; if you fellows start anything and there is trouble, why you're
on the wrong side of the fence. Besides, you're apt to get hurt.
Blenham and Woods are quitting cold; so far as I can see you boys would
be a pack of fools to make more of a stand than they are doing."

The man who had laughed and who now thrust his face forward through his
companions, grinned widely and announced:

"We mightn't worry none about where Blenham an' Joe get off. But we
ain't had our breakfasts yet!"

"You don't get any breakfast on my land!" said Steve sharply, more
afraid just now of having to do with good nature than with anger.

For if the dozen men there simply laughed and stepped out and
dispersed, his hands would be tied; he couldn't shoot down a lot of
joking men and he knew it. And they would know it.

"You're on your way right now! You, there!" This to a big,
stoop-shouldered young giant in the fore, blue-eyed, straw-haired,
northern-looking. "Step out this way, Sandy! And step lively."

The northerner shrugged and looked belligerent. Steve moistened his
lips.

"You can't bluff me--" began the northerner.

And Steve knew that, having gone this far, he could not stop at
bluffing. And he knew that he must not seem to hesitate.

"I can shoot as straight as most men," he said smoothly. "But
sometimes I miss an inch or two at this distance. You men who don't
want to take any unnecessary chances had better give Sandy a little
more elbow-room!"

The stoop-shouldered man squared himself a little, jerked up his head,
took on a fresh air of defiance. Slowly Steve lifted the muzzle of his
gun--slowly a man drew back from the northerner, a man fell away to the
right, a man drew a hasty pace back at the left. He was left standing
in the middle of the open doorway. He shifted a little, dou