With rude courtesy Jim Hewin steadied her feet as she walked down the last sharp slope to the road. He turned to leave; an arm detained him. Her tones were low and pleadingly sweet. "A good night one, now." Head bowed, tired blood pounding, she slipped with furtive haste toward the darkened windows of the shack that was her home. IV THE CLASH XVIII Jim Hewin picked his satisfied way over the ramp's top and along the road below, toward the gap and the gap offices. He eyed the midnight stars with unseeing animal contentment, sluggishly at peace with the world. A voice from the watchman's hut blurred upon his hearing. "Hey, where you going?" The man peered closer. "Where the hell have you been? The old man's been looking for hours----" "I been right over in Hewintown." "He wants you, now." "What's up?" Reawakened briskness bristled in his tones. "Bringing in them carloads of miners." "Oh!" "He's in the guard auto by the machine house. Better hump yourself." Jim idled off, then changed his gait to a run as he heard the preliminary whirr of the engine. "Hai!" he shouted, as the lighted nose turned up the hill. "Hai! Wait! It's Jim!" Tom Hewin made room for him on the front seat. "Take this rifle. Got your automatic?" They joined the three other cars, ran on too far by the viaduct, and doubled back. The thin pop of fire-arms reached them, then the distant crackle of a volley. The men hunched together excitedly, blood tingling at the prospective ambuscade of the man-hunt. The wash of the headlight on the tall pines beyond the cut located the engine. "There!" came Tom's stabbing whisper. The cars coursed to the curve, and turned parallel, facing the tracks. The angry glare of four searchlights burned against the black figures huddled above the stalled train. The startled crowd eddied together, then scattered in headlong panic. Gunfire thunder and pelting lead poured from the rows of rifles toward the fleeing bodies. Jim sprang out, crouched beside the searchlight, blazed away. He ran forward, stumbling against a pungently resinous stump. He rested his rifle on it to aim. Crack! The clumsy figure halted, raised wild arms grotesquely, fell spinning toward him. He caught up with the foremost guards, and stood with them for a volley across the narrow railroad gulch. "Come on," boomed Huggins, the deputy sheriff in charge, running to the top of the cut. Jim followed. A wounded miner on the left trembled to his knees; his pistol aimed uncertainly at the man ahead. Jim's automatic plupped; the man's face butted against the rocky ground. "Hey, there," Huggins bellowed, "Whatcher stop for?" "We're goin' on," a gunman below shouted back. "We're goin' on, I say." "Go on, then," he replied, disgustedly. "Don'cher hear him, Ed?" to the engineer. "Go on, he says." "Ain't I going?"