Plegg turned aside and stooped as if to examine a joint in the pressure pipe which led the air from the compressor-plant at the portal to the drills in the heading. When he straightened up it was to say, “Have you seen Lushing?” “No.” “He is here at the front again; so Altman told me this afternoon.” “Which means that from now on we’re to have him around under foot!” gritted the angry one. Plegg glanced back into the depths where the _chug-chug_ of the drills had ceased. “We’d better be moving out; they’re getting ready to fire a round of shots,” he offered; and after they were in the open air and the muffled reverberations of the dynamite had come rolling out to jar upon the midnight silence: “Lushing will do more than get under foot. He is spiteful, and when he gets ready to hit out, we’ll all know about it. I’m only hoping that he and Dargin won’t get together and compare notes.” They had started to walk down to the approach track where the waiting locomotive was standing before David made his comment on the Lushing vindictiveness. “Plegg,” he said grittingly, “you know, and I know, the particular reason why Lushing wants to stick a knife into us. It’s running in my mind that somebody ought to put him out of the game. And if he strikes me just right, I’m the man to do it!” XIX The Ultimatum On the day succeeding David Vallory’s midnight visit to the tunnel the guest list of the Alta Vista Inn had a number of additions. Upon the arrival of the stub train from Agorda, David met the three for whose coming Oswald’s letter had prepared him, and even in the moment of welcomings saw his difficulties take on added thorninesses. Oswald, his face set in lines of frowning determination, was evidently anticipating reproaches, or something sharper; but when David saw his sister, and marked her quick little groping for Oswald’s hands in the descent from the car-steps, his heart smote him and he said neither more, nor less, than was meet.