The Rajah's smile was ferocious.

"Just now he is trespassing, and directing others to trespass, upon
private property. Do you see that dump up there on the mountain?--the
hole that looks like a mouth with a long gray beard hanging below it?
That is a mine, and its claim runs down across the track where Misteh
Winton is just now spiking his rails."

"But, I don't understand," she began; then she stopped short and clung
to the strong arm. A man in a wide-flapped hat and cowboy
_chaparejos_, with a revolver on either hip, was crossing the stream
on the ice-bridge to scramble up the embankment of the new line.

"The officer?" she asked in an awed whisper.

The Rajah made a sign of assent. Then, identifying Winton in the
throng of workers, he forgot Virginia's presence. "Confound him!" he
fumed. "I'd give a thousand dollars if he'd faveh me by showing fight
so we could lock him up on a criminal count!"

"Why, Uncle Somerville!" she cried.

But there was no time for reproaches. The leather-breeched person
parading as the Argentine town-marshal had climbed the embankment,
and, singling out his man, was reading his warrant.

Contrary to Mr. Darrah's expressed hope, Winton submitted quietly.
With a word to his men--a word that stopped the strenuous labor-battle
as suddenly as it had begun--he turned to pick his way down the rough
hillside at the heels of the marshal.