Before long the Singletons separated, a man to himself, seeking to get at all sides of the refuge the negroes had chosen. They did not mean to shoot to kill; they meant only to shoot to scare. If they stopped the building of the little railroad, that which they considered their injured pride would be healed. Then they opened fire again with hair-fine aim. But a glancing bullet drew blood from the engineman's forearm--and Wolfe heard bitter words of blame directed toward himself. It put Wolfe at the end of the tether that had been strained so hard. He could have held himself in no longer. The primitive part of him rose above his better self. He snatched his revolver from its holster, and turned upon Weaver almost savagely. "We're going to fight, my friend," he said calmly but with a dangerous glitter in his eyes. "Their bluff is getting serious--if it's a bluff. A barricade all around us first--at it, boys!" The ties made it. When it was done, Little Buck Wolfe, bright-eyed, white in the face, straightened behind it and began to look for a Singleton. He wanted to see Fightin' Lon. He had forgotten now that Lon was Tot's only brother; that Tot had loved him nearly all her life; and that Tot had saved him from death at the hands of the murderous Cat-Eye Mayfield--the vise of circumstance had pressed it entirely out of his memory in that moment of crisis. He caught a glimpse of Fightin' Lon, and he fired six shots at him! And Fightin' Lon, safe behind a tree, laughed down, "Bah! You couldn't hit the United States, Little Buck, wi' a double-barreled scatter-gun!" Wolfe growled out one of the few oaths of his responsible years, and began to reload his revolver's cylinder hastily. A Singleton bullet jumped his hat tantalizingly on his head, but he paid no attention whatever to it. When he began to fire again, the foreman joined in with his own revolver. The air in the barricade became thick with powdersmoke. The echoes of the firing became one continuous roar. Then one of the hillmen cried out in pain, and following that, the acting-chief of the Singletons shouted in a black rage, "You've got blood now, Little Buck Wolfe! We're a-goin' to shoot to kill from now on!" Weaver caught the general manager by a shoulder and drew him down and out of danger. Bullets began to fairly pepper the barricade. The real seriousness of their position smote Wolfe like a blow. He wasn't used to this. "Look up there!" said Weaver, pointing toward the Big Blackfern's jaw of Devil's Gate. Old Buck Wolfe and his men, all of them armed, stood in plain view up there among the boulders. "If your people don't help us," Weaver went on, "right here is where we either stick up a white flag, or check out. We can't handle the Singletons; there's too many of them. Let me ask your father for help!" "No!" Wolfe objected. "No to the white flag, too!" But Weaver was already shouting lustily to the leader of the Wolfes.