“There’s money owing me,” he said politely, “and she ain’t going nowhere till it’s paid, see?” The red surged into Jim’s cheeks, pale from working underground, and his voice rose dangerously out of its soft rumble. “There’s a hell of a lot more than money owing you, you God-forgotten little skunk, and if you don’t get out o’ my way I’m liable to pay you the part of it you ain’t lookin’ for!” He kept his eye on the other’s hands and his muscles braced. If you started things in Al’s place you finished them swiftly, or they finished you. The white hairy fingers twitched into the expected signal and Jim swung the bony mass of his fist against Al’s ear as he would have swung a pick into a stubborn conglomeration of quartz. But that was incidental. He didn’t even notice where the little man rolled. Jerked forward by Al’s signal, a very different antagonist was coming on the jump--Hard Pan Schmitz, the dance hall bouncer. Jim Briggs was no match for him and knew it. Almost as if he had followed through the blow that sent Al spinning, he snatched up a heavy lighted lamp, whirled it above his head and flung it. It struck Schmitz’s raised forearm, smashed down his guard and covered him with broken glass and burning oil. In the stunned second before the racket began Jim took Rosie by the wrist and broke through to the street. Behind them the place seethed like an ants’ nest laid open by a spade. He pulled her around the first corner. They pelted through the snow as fast as she could run. He zigzagged his way through the town, taking alleys when he could. They came at length to the door of a wooden shack below the level of the sidewalk, on an unlighted street. Its unpainted boards were warped, it listed heavily and, in common with all the other houses in the block, it looked deserted. But Jim jumped down to it, key in hand, and by the time Rosie had descended the rickety steps that led from the sidewalk he had opened the door. He shut it behind her, struck a match and led the way into a room furnished with a stove, a camp cot, a chair and a small pine table with a smoke blackened lamp on it. He lighted the lamp. Rosie fell into the chair, breathing in big painful gulps. She wasn’t used to running. The great altitude--ten thousand feet--had played havoc with her breath. Jim had swung a pick there too long to be much affected. They looked at each other in the dim light. “It’s jest a place to sleep,” he said awkwardly. “Nobody knows I own it. Feller gave it to me that struck it rich an’ went away. Mostly I’m in the hills anyhow. So wouldn’t anybody look for us here.” And then: “The sheriff and the marshal’s both down on Al. If we can get away without bein’ noticed, it ain’t likely anybody’ll foller.” “Maybe it’d be safe for you to stay, then,” said Rosie, when she had breath enough to say anything. “Maybe. But I was aimin’ to go anyhow. Why don’t you go with me, an’--an’ stay with me?” She looked at him steadily. “I ain’t fit.”