Again his coarse laugh, which made her shudder. Then more broken laughs, whispered words. She was obliged to take the arm of her rough captor to descend from the car. "She don't see very well," said Aleck in explanation. "Maybe just as well she don't, heh?" She stood looking about her vaguely, helpless. She could hear the high moaning of the wind above her, in the tops of pine trees. Some one led her to the front of a tent--she could hear the flapping of the fly in the wind. She sank down by chance upon a blanket roll. Her captor threw down the front flap of the tent. She heard voices of other men. They paid not too much attention to her at first. Big Aleck, their leader, went on with hurried orders. "We got to get out of here in not more'n an hour or so," said he. "The Johns'll come. I fixed a couple dozen stacks of hay for them." "See anybody down below, Aleck?" asked a voice which Mary Warren recognized as different from the others she had heard. And then some low question was asked, to which Big Aleck replied. "Well, I'll take her along with me, when I go out, far as that's concerned," said he. "She says she's Sim Gage's housekeeper! Huh!" "But suppose she gets away and squeals on us?" spoke a voice. "She can't get away. Let's go eat." She was close enough to where they sat eating and drinking to hear all that was said, and they spoke with utter disregard of her presence. She never had heard such language in her life, nor known that such men lived. Never yet had she so fully taken home to herself the actual presence of a Government, of a country, never before known what threats against that country actually might mean. An enemy? Why, here was the enemy still, entrenched inside the lines of victorious and peace-abiding America--trusting, foolish, blind America, which had accepted anything a human riff-raff sneeringly and cynically had offered her in return for her own rich generosity! Mary Warren began to see, suddenly, the tremendous burden of duty laid on every man and every woman of America--the lasting and enduring and continuous duty of a post-bellum patriotism, that new and terrible thing; that sweet and splendid thing which alone could safeguard the country that had fought for liberty so splendidly, so unselfishly. "If they ever run across us in here with the goods on us--good-night!" hesitated a voice. "I don't like to carry this here cyanide--we got enough for all the sheep and cattle in Montana." "Our lawyers'll take care of us if we get arrested," said Big Aleck indifferently. "Yes, but we mightn't get arrested--these here ranch Johns is handy with rope and lead." "Ach, no danger," argued Aleck. "It's safer than to blow up a armory or a powder mill, or even a public building--and we done all that, while the war was on. We'll give 'em Force! This Republic be damned--there is no republic but the republic of Man!"