“You bet you!” said Allen. “This place has been drifting along to the graveyard. It’s a godsend to have somebody come along that’s sudden. From what I hear you’re sudden enough to suit anybody—judging from your little love-feast with Moran this afternoon.” “I suppose the citizens are holding a funeral over me.” “Yes. But they’re thinking, too. You mentioned a few things that gave them something to think about. I don’t figure you did Peleg Goodwin’s campaign a heap of good. It’s going to be a fight, though. Moran’s spending money.” “The next prosecutor ought to have legal evidence of it,” said Jim. “By Jove!” Allen exclaimed, “that’s something I overlooked. If evidence is to be had I’ll get it.” Jim went back to the office to study a map of the section and to lay the plans for his campaign. CHAPTER XVIII That night Tim Bennett’s lumberjacks began to drift in. There were Danes, Frenchmen, Irish, a sprinkling of Indians. They did not linger in Diversity, nor did they congregate, but passed quickly through with a cheerful air. There was exhilaration, anticipation, in their eyes, whether of Scandinavian blue or of aboriginal black. Old times were back again. For a moment a decadent age of which they despaired was returning to better manners, and there was to be a fight. Peavey handles! There was joy to be had from the very sound of it. In the morning a scattering of big men, predominantly Irish, got off the train and straggled away. In the afternoon another group arrived. They came so quietly, so unostentatiously, that Diversity was hardly aware of them. A full fifty were on hand—fifty fighting-men such as no other set of conditions has produced, men who fought and worked for the joy of it. A race of men who worked, not for pay, but because they loved the work, is worthy of chronicle. They live no more. Men whose highest wage was the knowledge that their camp or crew, or they individually, had done more and harder and better work than some other camp or crew or individual have resident in them something that should be handed down through time for other generations to admire. They possessed vices, but they were brief, flaming, roaring safety-valve vices, almost epic in themselves. For months they were accustomed to live austere, laborious, loyal lives in the ramps. Then for a day, a week, they appeared among their fellows, and their fellows received them and robbed them and plied them with liquor and directed their splendid energies into ways of debauchery. On the scales of justice the robust virtue of them outweighs their brief, primitive descents into the depths. They were men. Tim Bennett reported to Jim Ashe. “They’re here, fair bustin’ with the thought of it. The taste of a fight is in their mouths and they’re rollin’ it under their tongues.” “Good men?” “Mr. Ashe,” said Tim, joyously, “I’d undertake to drive logs through hell with ’em—and the devil throwin’ rocks from the shore.” “Any talk in town?”