MERN’S mercenaries were not cowards. They had served valiantly as guards of strike breakers, had fought in many forays, had winged their attackers, and had been winged in return. At mill gates they had resisted mobs and had endured missiles; they had ridden on trucks, protecting goods and drivers, through lanes of howling, hostile humanity; they had thrown the cordon of their bodies around dock workers.
But the gunmen’s exploits in intrepidity had been, of and in the cities.
The environment at Skulltree was the Great Open.
They were not backed by solidity or barricaded behind walls. There was not the reassurance of good, honest earth under their feet; they were precariously perched in space, so it seemed—standing on the stringers of the dam, peering into a void of shrouding mists and thunderous waters, the wilderness all about them!
In their battles in past times they had been able to see the foe; now they were called on to fight a noise—the bodeful detonations of blasts, to right, to left—here and there.
There was a foe; he was on his way. They did not know what sort of ruin he purposed to wreak as the climax of his performance. Craig himself did not know, so he affirmed in reply to anxious queries, and the boss’s uncertainty and increasing consternation added to the peculiar psychological menace of the thing.
“Give us orders, Mr. Craig!” pleaded the captain of the guards. “Show us something to fight against. How many of ’em are there? Where are they?
“It’s that damnable Latisan, working single-handed. I’m sure of it. Go get him!”
“If you don’t get him, he’s going to blow up this dam,” stated the frightened lawyer.
A far-flung bomb of dynamite landed in the water and shot a geyser spraying against the fog pall.