While the foreman continued to talk, Stanley again looked over the human wrecks that he had rounded up and brought out of Sellersville. “What can we do?” echoed Stanley, repeating the last question tartly. “Well, I’ll tell you one thing we can do. We can throw Sellersville into the river.”
Dancing and Scott were gone half an hour. The report, when they returned, was not encouraging. “It is a bunch of cutthroats from Medicine Bend, colonel,” said Bob Scott.
“All friends of yours, I presume, Bob,” returned Stanley.
The scout only smiled. “John Rebstock is there with his following. But the boss, I think, is big George Seagrue. He is mean, you know. George has got two or three men to his credit.”
“Are we enough to clean them out, Bob?” inquired Stanley impatiently.
Scott looked around and his eye rested for a moment on Dancing. He hitched his trousers. “There’s about thirty men down there. I expect,” he continued reflectively, “we can take care of them if we have to.”
Stanley turned to the sergeant of his troopers. “Pitch a permanent camp, sergeant. There will be nothing to take us any farther up the river.”
As Stanley gave the order Bucks noticed that Dancing winked at Scott. And without the meaning glances exchanged by the lineman and the scout, Bucks would have understood from Stanley’s manner that he meant strong measures. Stanley sent a further message to the contractor, and the foreman, followed by his convoy of humanity, started on. The soldiers, foreseeing a lively scene, stripped their pack-horses and set at work pitching their tents.
Leaving four men in camp, the engineer, accompanied by his escort, rode down the bluffs and, striking a lumber road, galloped rapidly through the poplar bottom-lands toward the gamblers’ camp. It was an early tour for human wolves to be stirring, and the invaders clattered into Sellersville before they attracted any attention.