But at this his eyes grew hard. “I owe him something more, now, for that anonymous letter. Besides, he’s out for my scalp, personally, and I shall certainly try to hold up my end if he starts anything. You can’t blame me for that, Vinnie. But that is a future. There is Wishart coming out of the breakfast-room, and I suppose he is looking for you. Anyway, my job is yelling for me and I must go. Don’t you worry a single minute about anything; do you hear?” “Not even about Herbert and Lucille?” she threw in quickly, as one thrusts an antagonist who is helplessly off his guard. “Oh, say; that isn’t fair!” he retorted, with a frown that turned itself into a grin in spite of the reluctances. “I’m right about Bert and the little sister--I’m practically certain I am; but you’ve got me going, and you know it. Do whatever you think is best. Good-by.” What Miss Virginia thought was best was not to stay and meet the short-sighted heir of the breakfast-foods who was rambling aimlessly in her direction. Instead, she went into the lobby and sent a telegram. It was addressed to her father at Red Butte, and it was short and to the point: “Highly important that you return at once. “V.” XXV Cataclysmic Notwithstanding his chief’s angry assertion that he did not need safeguarding, Silas Plegg had contrived to keep track of the goings and comings of “the little big boss” on the job, and his vigilance was increased after the near-tragedy in the tunnel. The gossip of the camps made much of the little war which had developed between the Grillage Company’s chief and Lushing, and it was quickly passed from lip to lip that the enmity between the two men had now become actively and vindictively personal; had, in the phrase of the unfettered desert country, reached the stage in which each was “looking” for the other with vengeful intent. In spite of the assertion, often repeated and as often contradicted, that Strayer’s injury was purely the result of an unlucky accident, there were many to speak of it with an eyelid drooped, and to intimate that Lushing would go far to even up the account with David Vallory, an account which carried its largest debit item in the blow which had disfigured him. For Plegg there was a small lessening of one of the many stresses when David, on the day after the accident, had modified the order given in the battle night when he had so promptly backslidden into the field of things elemental. “About keeping that tunnel situation dark, Plegg: I’ve been thinking that some of our men might take me too literally--that possibly you did,” was the way the modifying clause was introduced. “I was pretty savage that night. I told you that Lushing shot at me, but let you infer that he missed. It was a miss, but it wouldn’t have been if my field-note book hadn’t turned the bullet.” “I saw the hole in your coat afterwards,” said Plegg quietly.