"I thought so," he muttered.
He went back to Weaver and the negroes.
"I'll answer for your safety, boys, until the middle of the afternoon," he told the crew. It would require that long, he figured, to build the railroad to the deadline. "You know very well that you can trust me to keep my promises. Double pay from now on. Go to it."
The laborers resumed their work, but not very willingly. There was a spirit of certain danger in the air they breathed.
A few minutes later, Wolfe faced this pointed inquiry from his foreman: "Well, sir, have you any plans as to what we're going to do after the middle of the afternoon?"
"I must admit, Weaver," promptly, "that I haven't."
He thought, then, of something he had once said to Colonel Mason: "When I get to the barrier, I'll go over it, or under it, or around it, or through it."
The little speech had seemed dramatic enough at the moment of its utterance. Now it seemed tragic and pitiful.
"See here," said Weaver, gripping Wolfe's arm firmly, "there's only one way out for you. I'll not deny that it's a hard way; it will cripple or kill your first purpose, the—er, elevating of your people; but there's no alternative. The law, I mean; that's your one way out. When you cross the deadline with the track, your dad and his men will be up there on the Big Blackfern's side of the Gate with rifles in their hands—all but your brother Nathan—and the devil will be to pay. After that, you won't be able to keep the law out; don't you see, sir?"
"The law——"