* * * * * He sat there dazed, uncomprehending because he had not seen the blow coming. But Starbuck stood above him, fists clenched, and that was enough to tell him. "I still have no fight with you," Johnny said softly. He thought he could have taken the bigger man and at this moment could think of nothing he would rather do, but Starbuck had already accused Diane of being his accomplice and he did not want to involve the girl further. He hoped Starbuck would be content to boast about this one-punch victory instead. "Scared?" Starbuck leered down at him, prodding his ribs with one foot. "Get up and punch his teeth in," Diane pleaded. But Johnny remained sitting on the ground, and shook his head. He explored his jaw gingerly with the fingers of one hand as if the thought of rising to take more of the same frightened him. His time of reckoning with Starbuck would come, he promised himself but now wasn't the time, not when it might involve Diane. "You're not going to sit there?" Diane insisted. "Don't just sit there!" Johnny shrugged. "Fighting him won't prove anything." He climbed to his feet and retreated out of Starbuck's range. He was the picture of abject cowardice and hoped it would inflate Starbuck's ego sufficiently to make him forget the charges he had brought against Diane. Starbuck was smiling smugly and booming something about letting Keleher decide what to do about Johnny Hope after they moved the encampment. But when Johnny stalked away from him toward Diane, calling her name, she presented him only with a stiff, haughty back and by the time he reached the tent the flap was down and tied securely. Johnny heard sobbing from within. A few moments later Starbuck and another man came and led him to a different tent where he remained under guard until the encampment had been broken, the tents and equipment packed and ready to move, the people assembled in the square clearing which now was dotted with folded tents and bedding rolls. "Let's move it!" Starbuck roared in his booming voice. The men stooped for their burdens, the few horses carried three and four times their normal loads. Starbuck waved the group forward dramatically, aware of his moment and making the most of it. They marched double-file into the narrow ravine and were soon well on their way toward where Keleher waited. CHAPTER IV 63-17-B was twenty years old, but a trip to the repair bays every time he returned to New York City kept his beryl-steel body gleaming as if it had rolled but yesterday from the assembly lines. Now 63-17-B could sense a stiffness in the second joint of his left leg and suspected corrosion. He was looking forward with keen anticipation to the time, in the near future, when he would stretch out in the repair bay and have his worn parts exchanged.