The group of excited men augmented fast, as little knots of miners were paid off, and found awaiting them a willing audience of their grievances. A word will fire a crowd of this kind as quickly as a fuse will set off a charge of giant powder. Knowlton watched them closely, out of the corner of his eye. He saw one of the leaders in the discussion stoop down and pick up a large rock. “Hey, Rigas! Drop that, quick!” he shouted. For answer the rock crashed through the glass of the office window. Knowlton waded into the midst of the crowd, and seized Rigas by the collar, almost hurling him off his feet. His rough tactics generally overawed his prisoners, but Rigas had been drinking, and fought. The crowd began to close in. Knowlton dropped his hand to the point where the suspenders joined his belt and whipped out his “automatic.” Raising it in the air, he swung it down with all his strength upon Rigas’s head. There was a stunning report, and the miner lay upon the ground, with a hole two inches wide through his forehead. The crowd, muttering angry curses, drew back. No one quite dared to lead an attack upon Knowlton, who stood his ground beside the body, his still smoking gun in his hand. The camp doctor came up on the run, having heard the sound of the report. Kneeling beside the body, he gave short and incisive directions. “Valrigo, Peres, Gonzales, and Escallerra; you four carry him over to the hospital!” The four men whom he had designated bent over and clumsily raised the inanimate body. “No, no,” said the doctor, “don’t let his head hang back. Here, Valencella! Come and hold up his head. That is right. Now slowly with him, boys; easy, don’t jolt him!” The doctor walked beside the bearers, his hand on Rigas’s heart, which for a wonder was still beating. Behind them fell in a sullen, straggling, pushing procession of the other men, watching the blood drip from Rigas’s head. Then Knowlton turned, and walked slowly into the office. As he entered, the volume of curses changed from a mutter to a roar. He found Loring on his knees, locking the combination of the safe. “Well, Mr. Loring, I’ve done it now. I’ve killed Rigas. These damned automatics! You can beat a man over the head for a week with a Colt without its going off.” “Too bad!” said Stephen calmly, rising from his knees. “But the character of Rigas was not such that he will be a great loss to the world. He was always causing some sort of mischief.” “It ain’t Rigas that I am worrying about,” said the deputy. “It’s the rest of them.” “How long can you hold them in check?” asked Stephen.