Page:Frank Packard - On the Iron at Big Cloud.djvu/340

 method than that of kicking over the roulette table, sending it and the attendant, who was presiding over the little whirling ball in Pete's interest, crashing to the floor. That stranger was Munford. And that was how Munford came to join the army of the Rockies.

A number of the company men were present and they sided in with Munford. Before this amalgamation, Pete and his hangers-on went down to ignominious defeat, and the "Golden Luck," to utter demolishment and ruin. News of the fracas spread rapidly to the other "joints." The dive-keepers joined forces, the company men did likewise, and that night became the wildest in the history of Big Cloud.

Munford took command of his new-found friends from the start. In the street fight that followed he did wondrous things—and did them with zest, delight and effectiveness. With his great bulk he towered above his companions, and the sweep of his long arms as they rose and fell, the play of his massive shoulders as he lunged forward to give impetus to his blows, was a marvelous sight to see. But the details of that fight have no place here. Its result, however, was that Munford, previously unknown and unheard of, became thereafter, a marked man in Big Cloud.

When the fight was over the company men, elated with victory though somewhat the worse for wear, retired to the yard to wait for the construction trains to take them up to their work. And while they waited they spent the time gazing in admiration at Munford who sat on the edge of a flat-car, his legs