The sheriff's reply was an order, but not for retreat. “He's one of the men we want; cover him!” he commanded. Unless the public occasion appeals strongly to the sympathies or the passions, a picked-up sheriff's posse is not likely to have very good metal in it. Peter Biggin laughed. “Don't be no ways nervous,” he said in an aside to Winton. “Them professional veniry chumps couldn't hit the side o' Pacific Peak.” Winton held his ground, while the sheriff tried to drive his men up a bare slope commanded by two hundred rifles to right and left. The attempt was a humiliating failure. Being something less than soldiers trained to do or die, the deputies hung back to a man. Virginia could not forbear a smile. The sheriff burst into caustic profanity. Whereupon Mr. Peter Biggin rose up and sent a bullet to plow a little furrow in the ice within an inch of Deckert's heels. “Ex-cuse _me_, Bart,” he drawled, “but no cuss words don't go.” The sheriff ignored Peter Biggin as a person who could be argued with at leisure and turned to Winton. “Come down!” he bellowed. Winton laughed. “Let me return the invitation. Come up, and you may read your warrants to us all day.” Deckert withdrew his men, and at Winton's signal the track-layers came in and the earth began to fly again. Virginia sighed her relief, and Bessie plucked up courage to go to the window, which she had deserted in the moment of impending battle. “Breakfast is served,” announced the waiter as calmly as if the morning meal were the only matter of consequence in a world of happenings. They gathered about the table, a silent trio made presently a quartet by the advent of Mrs. Carteret, who had neither seen nor heard anything of the warlike episode with which the day had begun. Mr. Darrah was late, so late that when he came in, Virginia was the only one of the four who remained at table. She stayed to pour his coffee and to bespeak peace. “Uncle Somerville, can't we win without calling in these horrid men with their guns?” A mere shadow of a grim smile came and went in the Rajah's eyes. “An unprejudiced outsideh might say that the 'horrid men with their guns' were on top of that embankment, my deah--ten to ouh one,” he remarked. “But I should think we might win in some other way,” Virginia persisted undauntedly. Mr. Darrah pushed his plate aside and cleared his throat. “For business reasons which you--ah--wouldn't undehstand, we can't let the Utah finish this railroad of theirs into Carbonate this winteh.” “So much I have inferred. But Mr. Winton seems to be very determined.” “Mmph! I wish Mr. Callowell had favehed us with some one else--any one else. That young fellow is a bawn fighteh, my deah.” Virginia had a bright idea, and she advanced it without examining too closely into its ethical part. “Mr. Winton is working for wages, isn't he?” she asked. “Of cou'se; big money, at that. His sawt come high.”