Winton stood out on the edge of the cutting, a solitary figure where
a few minutes before the earth had been flying from a hundred shovels.

The sheriff's reply was an order, but not for retreat.

"He's one of the men we want; cover him!" he commanded.

Unless the public occasion appeals strongly to the sympathies or the
passions, a picked-up sheriff's posse is not likely to have very good
metal in it. Peter Biggin laughed.

"Don't be no ways nervous," he said in an aside to Winton. "Them
professional veniry chumps couldn't hit the side o' Pacific Peak."

Winton held his ground, while the sheriff tried to drive his men up
a bare slope commanded by two hundred rifles to right and left. The
attempt was a humiliating failure. Being something less than soldiers
trained to do or die, the deputies hung back to a man.

Virginia could not forbear a smile. The sheriff burst into caustic
profanity. Whereupon Mr. Peter Biggin rose up and sent a bullet to
plow a little furrow in the ice within an inch of Deckert's heels.

"Ex-cuse _me_, Bart," he drawled, "but no cuss words don't go."

The sheriff ignored Peter Biggin as a person who could be argued with
at leisure and turned to Winton.

"Come down!" he bellowed.