"Hey--whatcher----" "What's your name?" "Aw, you lemme 'lone! I ain't done a thing." "Take him, there." He shook the boy savagely. "Your name's McGuire, ain't it? Frank McGuire--I know you." McGue came up again, holding in his irritation. "What do you want this boy for?" "None of your damn' business! We got a warrant for him, see? You keep out, or----" Several of the deputies in the rear clicked their hammers suggestively, snickering at the one-sided joke. A disturbed buzz wavered up and down the massed strikers. As Huggins turned up the wider road again, it grew in volume into a subdued stream of boohs, catcalls, hisses, low threats. He turned incautiously, facing them. "Don't you follow me, you gutter trash, or I'll jug the lot of you!" A weak satiric voice came from behind a house. "Aw, will you, though!" McGue's eyes grinned; but his face remained set, as he doggedly kept pace with the head of the marching guards. Two more men were taken in the same methodical fashion. The surging procession was now near the open center of the location, where a square had been left as a common, with the artesian well at one end. Girls and women quietly replaced the men in the front line, jeering and cursing at the flushed faces of the soldiers, occasionally stumbling awkwardly against them. There was a scream as a soldier turned suddenly on a pretty red-haired girl, and caught her wrist. An old Irish virago beside clutched his shoulder and flung him sideways. "Touch my daughter, you dirty bastard, and I'll tear your heart out!" Huggins re-formed his men at the entrance to the square. There were only fifty soldiers in line; there were already several hundred of the tenters, and their number swelled constantly. Of course, they couldn't do anything.... He had his orders. The stage was set for trouble. Over the heads of the women and girls, from the shelter of the nearest house, a rock whished--an apple-sized ore boulder from the iron heart of the hill. It crunched into one of the guards, square on his cheek. He grunted. An uncertain hand patted his dazed face. When he drew it away, it was smeared with blood; the stain widened over his collar and breast. A second stone came from the opposite side. Then another ... another.... Two deputies fired wildly in the direction of the hidden throwers. Out of the dissolving panorama of frightened strikers came a spurted crack, a spit of smoke. One of the deputies screamed, was supported, writhing terribly, by the men on either side of him. His head hung limp. "Back to that building, there," boomed Huggins, pointing to the distributing store at the mountain end of the square. The retreat began. The strikers eddied backward from the cleared place. From houses along the way unexpected bursts of rocks, an occasional shot, crashed into the close ranks of the law-enforcers.