"What in the name of the horn-headed Sancho do you think you can do all alone against guns?" demanded Vittum, scornfully. "Think?" repeated Latisan. "I've had plenty of time for thinking on my way up here. Let me alone, I say!" Lida went to him and put her hand on his arm, and he trembled; it seemed almost like a caress. But by no tenderness in his eyes or his expression was he indicating that he considered himself back on his former footing with her. "Miss Kennard, don't keep me from trying to square myself with the Flagg crew, if I can. I'm not hoping that anything can square me with you; it's past hope." He moved away, but she clung to him. "I must know what you intend to do. I'll not accept a reckless sacrifice--no, I'll not." "One evening in Adonia you gave me a lecture on duty and self-respect, Miss Kennard. I wish I'd taken your advice then. But that advice has never left my thoughts. I'm taking it now. I entreat you, don't let me shame myself again. This is before men," he warned her, in low tones. "Give me my fighting chance to make good with them--I beg you!" He set back his shoulders, turned from her, and shouted Craig's name till the Comas director replied. "Craig, yon in the fog! Do you hear?" "I hear you, Latisan!" "Do our logs go through Skulltree by your decent word to us?" "I'll never give that word, my man!" "Then take your warning! The fight is on--and this time I'm in it." "I'm glad to be informed. I have an announcement of my own to make. Listen!" He gave a command. Instantly, startlingly, in the fog-shrouded spaces of the valley rang out a salvo of gun fire. Many rifles spat. The sound rolled in long echoes along the gorge and was banged back by the mountain sides. "Latisan, those bullets went into the air. If you and your men come onto this dam----" "There's only one kind of a fight up here among honest men--and you won't stand for it, eh?" "We've got your number! You're declared outlaws. These men will shoot to kill." In the chorus from the Flagg crew there were howls and groans. "And argument won't bring to you any sense of reason and decency, will it?" demanded the drive master. "We shall shoot to kill!" insisted the magnate of the Comas corporation. "All right! If those are your damnable principles, I'll go according to 'em." The girl caught his hands when he started away. "You must not! No matter what you are--no matter what you know I am, now. He'll understand when we tell him--down there! There's more to life than logs!" "I have my plans," he assured her, quietly. "You must realize how much this thing means to me now." The unnatural silence in the ranks of the Flagg crew, after Latisan's declaration had been voiced, provoked Craig to venture an apprehensive inquiry. "You don't intend to come ramming against these guns, do you?" "Hold your guns off us! I'm going away. And these men are going with me." "That's good judgment."