Martinez confirmed this opinion on his return. "There are two barrels inside and a couple of fellows are dipping it up in tin cups like water," said he. "They're not even troubling to draw the stuff; the barrels have been placed on end and the heads knocked out. It will be the biggest spree San Mateo ever saw, with plenty of fighting after awhile. Women, you know, always start fights during a spree." "Those surely are not women from town," Weir exclaimed. "Oh, no. I never saw them before. Brought in here from somewhere--Santa Fé perhaps, El Paso more likely. You know the kind who would mix with that crowd--tough girls. They're wearing low necks and short skirts, red stockings and all that. You know the kind. Out of joints and dives somewhere. There's only a dozen, but they keep circulating and dancing with different ones. I just put my head through a window to look inside, which is lighted by a big kerosene lamp hanging from the roof; and I tell you, gentlemen, it made me sick the way those two fellows were dipping up whiskey and the crowd drinking it down." "And more men coming all the time," Weir stated. "And more coming, yes. It will be very bad there by midnight. Vorse and Burkhardt and Sorenson are managing the thing, of course." Martinez lighted a cigarette and stepped into the car. "No mistake about that, for Vorse's bartender is one of the men at the barrels. And I imagine Judge Gordon knew this thing was coming off though he made no mention of it." "Since we were ignorant of the matter, he naturally wouldn't inform us," Pollock remarked, dryly. "Time to put a stop to the show before it grows bad," Weir stated resolutely. And he started the machine. "If it can be stopped," Martinez replied. That was the question, whether or not now it would be possible even to reach and destroy the barrels inside the house, what with the numbers who would oppose the move and what with the state of intoxication that must rapidly prevail at the place. For as they drove away they could already detect in the mad revel about the old adobe dwelling a faster beat in the sharp shrieking music, a wilder abandon in the movements of the figures about the flames, a more reckless, fiercer note in the cries and oaths. "This is deviltry wholesale," Pollock said. "On a grand scale, one might put it." So thought a horseman who approached and halted almost at the same spot where the car had rested. This was Madden who with a warrant for Weir's arrest in his pocket had arrived opposite the house a moment after the automobile's departure. He had secured the warrant at eight o'clock according to the county attorney's request, but he had taken his own time about setting off to serve it.