no coquetry in these great flaps of leather or canvas, and they were
besmeared and rust-stained quite beyond any bib that ever suffered under
bread-and-molasses or mud-pie treatment.

They lounged and swaggered up, and stood at ease, not without rough grace,
in a sinuous line, coiled and knotted like a snake.

Ten feet back stood the new Hercules who was to take down that Hydra's two
hundred crests of insubordination.

They inspected him, and he them as coolly. He read and ticketed each man,
as he came up,--good, bad, or on the fence,--and marked each so that he
would know him among a myriad.

The Hands faced the Head. It was a question whether the two hundred or the
one would be master in Dunderbunk.

Which was boss? An old question.

It has to be settled whenever a new man claims power, and there is always
a struggle until it is fought out by main force of brain or muscle.

Wade had made up his mind on this subject. He waited a moment until the
men were still. He was a Saxon six-footer of thirty. He stood easily on
his pins, as if he had eyed men and facts before. His mouth looked firm,
his brow freighted, his nose clipper,--that the hands could see. But
clipper noses are not always backed by a stout hull. Seemingly freighted
brows sometimes carry nothing but ballast and dunnage. The firmness may be
all in the moustache, while the mouth hides beneath, a mere silly slit.
All which the hands knew.