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Standing to the left of the living room window while he reflected, he imagined a movement far down the grade. Immediately he fired. From Torrance's room came the thunder of his rifle. Evidently the bohunks were crossing the grade in numbers. Thereafter nothing happened for half an hour but pointless and desultory potting. It promised nothing to the attackers and the defence was still intact.
Along the mile of the Tepee that was known to man there was only one raft at least only one that had a right to exist the make-shift affair employed on construction duty down at the base of the trestle. Within sixty miles there was not a living soul but the construction gang and the two Policemen at Mile 127, not a horse but Torrance's and the Police pair.
On his followers below he bent malignantly joyful eyes. It was only a question of time now. The next bullet must have touched Torrance's shoulder, for he winced and edged closer to the near rail. Koppy cheered and recklessly waved his rifle. A shot snapped from over the grade, and a piece of bark flicked stingingly into the Pole's face. The surprise of it almost tumbled him from his perch.
Adrian Conrad, Torrance's foreman, Tressa's lover the latter first in sequence of time as in everything else knew these men and hated them with an intensity born of enforced association. Their unorthodox but definitive methods of settling the smallest dispute were familiar to him by experience.
Or it'll end only when the Italians and the Hungarians have cleaned out the Swedes and the Poles, or vice versa. There's not a second to waste." He had hold of Torrance's arm and was forcing him to run. "I know you're right, Adrian," panted Torrance, "but I don't want to."
And there was solid bottom to it. But down there, one hundred and fifty feet below Torrance's eyes, was two hundred yards of quicksands. There lay the real job. O'Connor had tackled it blithely enough, while Torrance was hustling grade from the east. But when Big Jim Torrance, his task completed, had rolled down his sleeves and commenced to pack, O'Connor was more than worried.
At one stage he thought it would be sufficient to appear at Torrance's shack just before the attack and add his rifle to the defence. On the other hand, were the story taken to the Police they would ignore everything in the pursuit of the leaders of the promised battle; and that might well mean the postponement of the completion of the trestle to the following summer.
A moment of silence, then: "Me Indian; no pale-face name." Torrance rushed from the bedroom. "Is that the Indian? Good Heavens! The trestle the trestle!" He had thrown wide the front door and gone before they could interfere. A hail of bullets came through. Keener eyes among the trees picked out Torrance's running bulk, but their eyes were keener than their aim.
At least that was the limit of Torrance's information, and none other had such claim to know. But this was not the construction raft and there were the horses. Torrance had already lost a dozen of his best in some mysterious way. It was with that thought that he had seized his rifle. Then the woman!
But Torrance's likewise were the wrong size, and the Indian disappeared into Tressa's room. The brakesman entrusted with a rifle in that room paid no attention until a strong hand wrenched it from him. "Yuh'll hurt yerself, sonny, playin' with a real gun. Yuh can have all I shoot to eat." When he returned to the living room, Mahon laid a hand on his shoulder. "My God, who are you?"
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