“I think you’d better,” said Keating quietly. “After what I saw last night, I think you’d better. There was no holding them--they were like savages, and the further they went the worse they got. They were backed up by whisky and the worst element in town. I was in the station with Carleton, Regan, Harvey, Riley and Spence and some of the other dispatchers. It was a regular pitched battle, and in spite of their revolvers the station would have gone with the rest if, along toward morning, the striking trainmen and the Brotherhood hadn’t taken a hand and helped us out. I don’t know that it’s over yet, that it won’t break out again to-night; though I heard Carleton say there’d be a detachment of the police in town by four o’clock. I wish you would pull out, Spirlaw. You said yourself that all these fellows here needed to start them sticking their claws into you was a little encouragement from the other end. They’ve been afraid of you, but they hate you like poison. Once started, they’ll be worse than the crowd at Big Cloud for hate is a harder driver than whisky. Then besides, I really think you’d be of more use in Big Cloud. You could do some good there no matter what the end was, while here you’re alone and you stand to lose everything and gain nothing. I wish you would pull out, Spirlaw, won’t you?” Spirlaw reached out his hand and laid it on Keating’s shoulder, as he shook his head. “I’ve got a whole _lot_ to lose,” he answered, his hard face softening a little. “A whole lot. I can’t say things the way you do, but I guess you’ll understand. You got something that means a whole lot to you, that you’d risk anything for--what you want to do and what you want to leave behind you when it comes along time to cash in. Well, I guess most of us have in one way or another, though mabbe it don’t rank anywheres up to that. I reckon, too, a whole lot of us don’t never think to put it in words, an’ a whole lot of us couldn’t if we tried to, but it’s there with any man that’s any good. I’d rather go out for keeps than pull out--I’d rather they’d plant me. D’ye think I’d want to live an’ have to cross the street because I couldn’t look _even a Polack_ in the eyes--a man would be better dead, what?” For a moment Keating did not answer, he seemed to be weighing the possibility of still shaking the determination of the road boss before accepting it as irrevocable: then, evidently coming to the conclusion that it was useless to argue further, he pointed to the revolvers. “Then the sooner you load those the better,” he jerked out. Spirlaw looked at him curiously, questioningly. “Because,” went on Keating, answering the unspoken interrogation, “when I dropped off the train I saw that fellow Kuryla--he was pointed out to me in Big Cloud yesterday--and three or four more drop off on the other side. I didn’t know they were on the train until then, of course, or I would have had them put off. There isn’t much doubt about what they are here for, is there?”