Bradley's eyes fixed on a small boy's figure that came suddenly streaking across the road and flung itself at the MacQuigans' little front gate; then the gate swung, and the boy came rushing up the yard. Bradley thought he recognized the figure as one of the call boys, and a call boy running like that was always and ever a harbinger of trouble. Instinctively he glanced back into the room. Mrs. MacQuigan was out in the kitchen. Bradley stepped quickly into the hall, and reached the front door as the boy began to pound a tattoo with his fists on the panels. Bradley jerked the door open. "What's wrong?" he demanded tersely. The light from the hall was on the boy now--and his eyes were popping. "Say," he panted, in a scared way, "say, one of Reddy's friends sent me. There's a wild row on at Faro Dave's. Reddy's raisin' the roof, an'----" Bradley's hand closed over the youngster's mouth. In answer to the knock, Mrs. MacQuigan was hurrying down the hall. "What's the matter, Martin?" she questioned nervously, looking from Bradley to the boy and back again to Bradley. "Nothing," said Bradley reassuringly. "I'm wanted down at the roundhouse to go out with a special." He gave the boy a significant push gatewards. "Go on, bub," he said. "I'll be right along." Bradley went back into the house, picked up his cap, and, with a cheery good-night to Mrs. MacQuigan, started out again. He walked briskly to the gate and along past the picket fence--Mrs. MacQuigan had the shade drawn back, and was watching him from the window--and then, hidden by the Coussirats' cottage next door, he broke into a run. It wasn't far--distances weren't great in Big Cloud in those days, aren't now, for that matter--and in less than two minutes Bradley had Faro Dave's "El Dorado" in sight down Main Street--and his face set hard. He wasn't the only one that was running; men were racing from every direction; some coming up the street; others, he passed, who shouted at him, and to whom he paid no attention. In a subconscious way he counted a dozen figures dart in through the swinging doors of the "El Dorado" from the street--news of a row travels fast. Bradley burst through the doors, still on the run--and brought up at a dead halt against a solidly packed mass of humanity; Polacks and Swedes and Hungarians from the construction gangs; a scattering of railroad men in the rear; and more than a sprinkling of the harder element gathered from all over town, the hangers-on, the sharpers, and the card men, the leeches, the ilk of Faro Dave who ran the place, and who seemed to be intent on maintaining a blockade at the far end of the barroom. The place was jammed, everybody craning their necks toward the door of the back room, where Faro Dave ran his stud, faro and roulette layouts; and from there, over the shuffling feet of the crowding men in the bar, came a snarl of voices--amongst them, Reddy's, screaming out in drunken fury, incoherently.