[Illustration] The big mountain man looked up, saw his namesake, and went to his feet. His face was the face of a savage now. His coal-black eyes glared his unspeakable contempt. Every big, hard muscle in his body seemed to be gathering itself for action. He was a human tiger. "What in hell do ye want here?" he demanded in a voice that was as cold and as merciless as death itself. "I came to ask you for advice," quietly. "I'm very much up against it, as the saying is. If you were in my place, trying to help your people, trying to make good for the sake of those who put up everything they had to back you, trying to win out without recourse to law--I say, if you were in my place, what would you do? You know the circumstances. Please advise me." The shot failed to tell. It glanced off without leaving the slightest impression as a shot. "Ef I was in yore place," came readily and sneeringly, "I'd change my name to Singleton--or Dawg--and 'en I'd go out in the woods and sp'ile a good rope by a-hangin' myself with it. That's edzactly what I'd do ef I was in yore place." "That's no answer to my question," the younger Wolfe protested, trying hard to hold his temper in leash and succeeding barely. There were times when education fought almost a losing fight with his hot hill blood, the blood that was not so far removed from the dark wildernesses and their animal skins and clubs with heads of stone, and this was one of those times. "Yes, it is, too," blared Old Buck Wolfe. "Ef the's anything else ye wants to know, spit 'er out; ef the' hain't, make some quick tracks away from here!" "One thing more," said the son, with enforced calmness. "Do you actually mean to make murderers and outlaws of yourselves in the attempt to keep me out of the basin?" His father took up from beside the doorstep a repeating rifle of heavy caliber. Old Buck held the weapon in his left hand, and with his right forefinger slowly tapped the blued-steel barrel. "The fust man 'at drives a spike on this side o' the little poplar in the Gate will be shot by me, myself," he declared in a voice that had become hoarse. "Now ye've got my word fo' that, and you know mighty well 'at I keeps my word." "The first man to drive a spike on this side of the deadline," Little Buck Wolfe replied, "will be me. You know that you could never shoot your own son. Our people never would stand for that. You wouldn't be chief of your 'clan' any longer. You'd be cast out, just as you've cast me out. And if it's necessary, I'll drive all the spikes that remain to be driven." This was a shot that made an impression. Old Buck had gone ashen behind his beard, and his eyes were wide and staring. But he was not long in a quandary. His rage had drawn him deep into the vortex of primitive passion. The ties of blood were none too sacred now. He advanced a few steps, and shook a great fist at his fifth son.