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"Spit it out, Joe," he ordered. "Where'd that come from?"

"You let me go! I ain't workin' for you. You ain't my boss. What I got, she's mine! Now I goin' home."

Gallup, still holding him with one hand, probed at him with his eyes, seeking to fathom what powers of determination and stubbornness lay within a mongrel soul. Joe looked frightened; there were beads of sweat on his forehead, stealing downward from under his black matted hair. But there was in his look the glint of desperate defiance.... Gallup called softly:

"Hey, Ricky; come here."

His combination cook and chore man returned through the inner door with an alacrity which must have told his employer that he had never stirred a step from the threshold. He, like the others, was on fire with suddenly stimulated greed.

"Go get Taggart," said Gallup, his eye all the time on Joe. "Slip out the back way and go quiet. He's down at his cabin. I want him here in a hurry."

Ricky, though with obvious reluctance, withdrew. Once out of sight, however, he ran as fast as he could, anxious to be back with no loss of time.