He reached in and threw men right and left. He knocked others down. One he picked up and used as a battering-ram, and so he fought his way in and cleared the rabble away from Reivers. Reivers with more than human tenaciousness had retained a glimmer of consciousness. He saw Toppy standing astride of him fighting for his life. And in that beaten, desperate moment Reivers laughed once more. “You’re a —— fool, Treplin,” said he. “You’d better let them finish the job.” Toppy dragged him to his feet. A gleam of mastery flashed over the Snow-Burner as he felt himself standing upright. He swung to face the men. “Out of the way there, you scum!” he ordered, in his old manner. The men laughed in reply. The spell had been broken. The men had seen the Snow-Burner knocked down and beaten. They had seen that Toppy was his master. They had kicked him; they had had him under them. No longer did he stand apart and above them. They cursed him and swarmed in, striking, kicking, hauling, and dragged him to the ground. “Give him to us, bahss!” they cried. “Let us kill him, bahss!” Some of them hung back. They did not wish to run contrary to the wishes of Toppy, their “bahss” and champion. Toppy once more got Reivers on his feet and dragged him toward the gate. A knife or two gleamed in the crowd. “Run for the gate!” cried Toppy. Reivers tottered a few steps and fell. Over him Toppy stormed, fought, commanded, but the mob pressed constantly closer. Then, suddenly, they stopped striking. They began to break. Toppy, looking around for the reason, saw Campbell and a guard running toward them—Campbell with his big revolver, the guard with his gun at a ready. With a last tremendous effort he picked Reivers up in his arms and ran to meet them. He heard the guard fire once, heard Campbell ordering the men to stand back; then he staggered out of the stockade and dropped his heavy burden on the ground. Behind him Campbell and the guard slammed shut the gate, and within the cries and curses of the men rose in one awful wail, the cry of a blood-mob cheated of its prey. Reivers rose slowly, first to his hands and knees, then to his feet. He looked at Toppy, and the only expression upon his face was a sneer. “You —— fool!” he laughed. “You poor weak sister! You’ll be sorry before morning that you didn’t let the men finish that job!” He turned, and without another word went staggering away to the building where he and the guards lived. CHAPTER XXI—THE END OF THE BOSS Back in the shop Campbell went to work with a will to doctor up Toppy’s battered face. “I dunno, lad, I dunno,” he muttered as he patched up the ragged cuts. “It was the poetry of justice that the men should have had him, but I dunno that I could ha’ left him lie there myself.” “Of course you couldn’t,” said Toppy. “A man can’t do that sort of thing. But, say, Campbell, what do you suppose he meant about being sorry before morning because I saved him?”