Perley cut the half-breed short off. “Once,” said he contemptuously, still quiet, not a tone raised, and his voice the more deadly for it, “once, perhaps you’ll remember, I warned you to keep out of my road. Lee, how’d that Indian get in the car?” “I don’t know,” said Lee. “Well, then, throw him out,” said Perley shortly, snapping his watch with his free hand. “We can’t stay here all day.” This little ruction between Perley and the half-breed has taken me longer to tell it, I guess, than it did to happen. Anyway, it didn’t cause the excitement you might think it would. The “blankets” were too busy drinking in the smell of that whisky to let their hungry eyes wander very far from anywhere but the open door of that car. And as for the stragglers, by the time they’d caught on to the fact that there was something on the boards besides that drunken Indian, Perley, with the same cool contempt, had slipped his gun back in his pocket and was boosting Lee into the car. The Indian offered no opposition as Lee tackled him. He couldn’t--he was beyond all that--he was so full of dead-eye it was oozing out by the pores. He just sat there, and Lee slid him to the door just as he was, still sitting, and dropped him out. He struck the ground with a thud, rebounded a foot, rolled over, grunted, and lay like a log. There was a guffaw from the camp stragglers, and a deep and envious chorus of “Ughs!” from the “blankets.” No, I’m not joking--it’s a long way from a joke, as you’ll see. They _were_ envious. It acted like a red rag on a bull--the possibility of attaining the condition, the state of heavenly bliss, that had been reached by their red brother, do you understand? Clancy wasn’t laughing. He stood where Perley had left him, sullen and with twitching face. I don’t know, I think it was Perley’s sheer nerve that kept the halfbreed from drawing and shooting the conductor when his back was turned. I don’t know--brute beast cowed by the human mind, perhaps. No one ever knew Breed Clancy. He had his yellow streak at times, and then again the blood that was in him made him worse than a frenzied madman. Yes, I guess it was a case of “brute” all right, for there was no cowing him when the frenzy was on him. Perley wasn’t laughing, either. He was opening and shutting his watch impatiently. “Come on! Come on!” he cried at Lee. “Get those barrels out. We’ve got to cross Number Two at the Creek. It’ll be the carpet for ours if we hold her up.”