"Put on your hat, Barrett, and walk out!" he shrilled. "Make way, there! This is my man, by ---- and he knows in his dirty heart why he's mine." But Barnum Withee's quiet woodsman's soul was not of a nature to be intimidated, and his instincts of fairness, when it was between man and man, had been made acute by many years of woods adjudication. "Hold on a minute, Linus!" he entreated, stepping between the two men with upraised hand. "You are both under my roof, and you've both eaten my bread to-day. I never got between men in a fair, square quarrel. I won't now. But you've got a gun, and he hasn't. I don't want to know your business. But if there's trouble between you it's got to be settled fair. You can't drag a man out of my camp to do him dirty--and it would be the same if it was only young Harry there that you were tryin' to take." "Good talk!" yelled the boss. "I'll give a hundred dollars--" began Barrett, seeing the advantage swinging his way; but Withee broke in with indignation. "No more of that talk, Mr. Barrett!" he cried. "I'll run my own crew when it comes to pay or to orders. Now, Warden Lane, what are you going to do with this man when you get him where you want to take him?" "I don't know!" snapped Lane, to the amazement of his listeners. And he added, enigmatically, "I can tell better after I've asked him some questions." "Ain't you ready to tell us that you'll use him man-fashion?" persisted Withee. The deep emotion which "Ladder" Lane had been trying to hide whetted the bitterness of his usual attitude towards mankind. "I'm not ready to let any fool mix himself into my affairs. We've argued this question long enough, John Barrett. Now you--step--out!" He leaped aside from the door, cocked the rifle, and motioned angrily with its muzzle. "Stay right where you are, Mr. Barrett," said the old operator, resolutely. "I'll stand for fair play." "And you'll get your pay for it, Withee, my friend!" stuttered his creditor, eagerly. "I don't forget favors. You stand by me, and you'll get your pay." "I haven't anything to sell, Mr. Barrett," said Withee, doggedly. "But I've got something to give you," persisted the frightened magnate, edging near him, and striving to hint confidentially. "You stand by me, and when it comes to contracts--" "I'm not buyin' anything, Mr. Barrett!" He signalled the lumber king back with protesting palm. "I'm simply tellin' Lane that he can't take a man out of my camp to do him dirty. And in that there's no fear and no favor!" Lane gazed at the determined face of the operator and at the massing men who crowded at the door, and whose nods gave emphatic approval of Withee's dictum. No one knew better than he the code of the woods; no one understood more thoroughly the quixotic prejudices and simple impulses which moved the isolated communities of the camps. Just then they would not have surrendered Barrett to an army, and Lane realized it.