Again he caught a brief glimpse of the interior of the roundhouse as a man before him went down under a blow from his fist. On the tender he saw Michael Moran—not fighting, but watching, directing. He saw a man break away from the melee and leap toward the engine, recognized Gilders. His teeth were bared, his hands empty. Jim struggled forward, shot another look, saw Moran, his face distorted with rage, raise a chunk of coal above his head and hurl it. Whether it found its mark or not Jim could not tell. Jim’s men were holding their own. Though outnumbered, they were trained to battle of this sort, with inherited talent for it, against men not bred to fight with their hands. But Moran’s men fought, and fought well. Numbers made them even, if not superior. It was apparent they had been told to guard the big door, for as best they could they remained solidly before it. They were not men to take the offensive on their own initiative, nor, Jim thought, would they assume it under orders unless the enemy were in actual retreat. It was a point to be taken advantage of. He wormed and wriggled out of the fight, marked the Dane who could drive an engine, and hauled him out, struggling. At random the two of them separated two others from the confusion. “The engine,” Jim panted. “Side door. Come on!” They scurried to a small door left unguarded, and plunged through. The engine was before them, Moran still on the tender. On the ground lay Gilders. Moran’s missile had flown true. The Dane with his companions stormed the cab. In an instant they had hurled down the engineer, hurled him so ungently that he did not rise. Jim dodged a lump of coal which Moran hurled, and himself threw a peavey handle which he had picked up somewhere in the fight. It caught Moran amidships so that he crumpled up on the coal, the breath knocked from his overnourished, undertrained body. Jim scrambled to his side, lifted him and dumped him off with scant regard for how or where he fell. “Toot the whistle!” he yelled. “Back her out.” The whistle screeched, and in that confined space its voice was the voice of many demons. The wheels began to turn. “One man up here,” Jim ordered, and when the man came he set an example by lifting his voice in battle-cry, by hurling lumps of coal at the backs of the defenders. They turned. Taken in the rear by a new enemy, menaced by a down-bearing locomotive, their morale departed, they scattered to each side, broke, some even turned in sudden flight. Jim’s lumberjacks did the rest. The locomotive moved out on a clear track, backed to the switch where stood the empty trucks. It was Jim who coupled them to the engine. “We’ve done the job here,” he said to the big Irishman who was his companion on the tender. “Collect the boys and load ’em on the trucks. We’re off for the woods. Maybe Bennett’s gang is chewing on more than it can swallow. Somebody see to Gilders inside there.”