The Rajah's smile was ferocious.
“Just now he is trespassing, and directing others to trespass, upon private property. Do you see that dump up there on the mountain?—the hole that looks like a mouth with a long gray beard hanging below it? That is a mine, and its claim runs down across the track where Misteh Winton is just now spiking his rails.”
“But, I don't understand,” she began; then she stopped short and clung to the strong arm. A man in a wide-flapped hat and cowboy chaparejos, with a revolver on either hip, was crossing the stream on the ice-bridge to scramble up the embankment of the new line.
“The officer?” she asked in an awed whisper.
The Rajah made a sign of assent. Then, identifying Winton in the throng of workers, he forgot Virginia's presence. “Confound him!” he fumed. “I'd give a thousand dollars if he'd faveh me by showing fight so we could lock him up on a criminal count!”
“Why, Uncle Somerville!” she cried.
But there was no time for reproaches. The leather-breeched person parading as the Argentine town-marshal had climbed the embankment, and, singling out his man, was reading his warrant.
Contrary to Mr. Darrah's expressed hope, Winton submitted quietly. With a word to his men—a word that stopped the strenuous labor-battle as suddenly as it had begun—he turned to pick his way down the rough hillside at the heels of the marshal.
For some reason that she could never have set out in words Virginia was distinctly disappointed. It was no part of her desire to see the conflict blaze up in violence, but it nettled her to see Winton give up so easily. Some such thought as this had possession of her while the marshal and his prisoner were picking their way across the ice, and she was hoping that Winton would give her a chance to requite him, if only with a look.
But it was Town-Marshal Peter Biggin, affectionately known to his constituents as “Bigginjin Pete,” who gave her the coveted opportunity. Instead of disappearing decently with his captive, the marshal made the mistake of his life by marching Winton up the track to the private car, thrusting him forward, and saying: “Here's yer meat, Guv'nor. What-all 'ud ye like fer me to do with hit now I've got it?”