The gawky youth came stumbling up, his outstretched hands carefully holding two tin cups filled with coffee close to the boiling point. Being a youth of good intentions, he tried very hard not to spill a drop. Being gawky, he stubbed his toe as he was rounding the group of women, and Mrs. Miller shrieked and swung back her hand, cuffing the gawky one straight into the thickest of the crowd. Other women screamed. Lance reached a long arm and plucked the youth out by the slack of his coat, shook him and propelled him into the darkness, where he collided violently with Sam Pretty Cow. Some one had been over-generous with Sam Pretty Cow. A drunken Indian is never quite safe. Sam Pretty Cow struck out blindly, yelling Piegan curses hoarsely as he fought. The crowd of men around the camp-fire came running. For a short space there was confusion, shouting, the shrill voices of scalded women denouncing the accident as a deliberate outrage. Mrs. Miller whirled on Lance. "You pushed him on me! If that ain't a Lorrigan trick!--" "Yeah--what yuh mean? Throwin' bilin' hot coffee on--" "Who says it's a Lorrigan trick?" "Might 'a' known what to expect--" "Get back here, away from the crowd. There may be shooting," Lance muttered to Mary Hope, and pulled her to the rear of the wagon and around upon the farther side. She could not resist. His strength was beyond any hope of combating it with her small strength. Mrs. Miller, whose scalded shoulder led her to wild utterances without thought of their effect upon others, shouted at him as he hustled Mary Hope away: "Yeah--_run!_ You're the one that done it--now run! That's like a Lorrigan--do your dirty work and then crawl out and let somebody else take the blame! That kid never--" "Aw, come back and fight, you big sneak!" A drunken voice bellowed hoarsely, and a gunshot punctuated the command. "Go on--get on the other side of the schoolhouse. Run! The fools will all start to shooting now!" Mary Hope stopped stubbornly. "I will not!" she defied him; and Lance without more argument lifted her from the ground, stooped and tossed her under the wagon, much as he would have heaved a bag of oats out of the rain. "Don't you move until I tell you to," he commanded her harshly, and ran back, diving into the thick of the crowd as though he were charging into a football scrimmage. "Who was it called me back to fight? Put up your guns,--or keep them if you like. It's all one to me!" In the dim light he saw the gleam of a weapon raised before him, reached out and wrenched it away from the owner, and threw it far over his shoulder into the weeds. "Who said a Lorrigan run? I want that man!" "I said it," bellowed a whisky-flushed man whose face was strange to him. "I said it, and I say it agin. I say--a Lorrigan!"