Up a gravelly hogback to a level a hundred feet from the tracks,--and they were in the midst of it. The uncertain rumble from men massed blackly in front of and all around the stalled engine's headlight, broke over them; they saw the train, somber and illy lit, stopped midway of the deep cut through the next chert hill--an ideal place for an ambuscade. They heard single voices, broken by the spurty wind. Then the men in front of the car dissolved, into the blackness on both sides of the track. Now they could see the piled mound of huge stones, cross ties, tree trunks, which had stopped the engine. Close below the headlight was a moving shadow they finally made out as company men, they could not tell how many. The red gleam of the headlight on dull metal shone on the far side. Before the mound of rocks and stumps two men still stood. "Get off that track," the words came clearer now, from one of the men just below the headlight. "Or we shoot." It happened so quickly that they hardly had time to get out of the car. A voice came from one of the two upon the track, the pleasant, velvety richness of a negro voice. "Ah reckon Ah kin walk on dis track ef Ah wants to." "You black----" He did not finish. From the deeper shadow below the tender, two rifles popped together, with a thin hollow noise, like playthings. There was a shrieking medley from all sides. For one instant, etched black against the light thrown by the unwinking eye of the engine, the two figures stood. One of the negroes plunged wildly to the side, clattering and tumbling down the seventy foot fill to the bottom of the sharp declivity. The other stood alone, a black break on the lighted area. He screamed once like a kicked dog. He slid to the ground. His body huddled across a rail. "God!" Dawson exploded. Tumbling out of the car, they started pelting toward the track. They stopped, still thirty feet from the lighted area, as half a dozen men plunged toward them, scattering to the safety of the woods. One came at them--Ben Wilson, who should have been with the committee. "For God's sake, don't go there--they're shooting to kill----" Dawson caught him by the collar, shook him bitterly. "What hell of a mess is this! We've got to stop it----" Wilson made a gesture of hopeless exultation, touched with something sublime. "You can't stop it now!" Dawson stared at him in amazement. The cries became louder, from all around the motionless train; they looked back. Protected by the guns under the headlights, a line of hesitating men were cursed forward to where the obstacle lay crudely across the tracks. The leader of the guards, rifle cached on his left forearm, pointed this way and that.