Suddenly the crowd which pressed upon him gave back and he heard a rush of feet and alarmed shouts. There was a yell that was not made by white men; short, active figures, lithe and fierce as cats, fell with resistless fury upon the retreating foe. The retreat turned into a rout: the strikers were running for their lives, with a swarm of aliens in savage pursuit.
Clay saw that they outnumbered all the Japanese at the mill; but where they came from was not a matter of much consequence. He must rouse himself to take part in the chase, and exact full vengeance from the fugitives. The rioters fled along the bank, scrambled across the log booms, and took to the water; and Clay laughed harshly as he drove some of the laggards in. Whether they could swim or not was their own affair.
He went back to the office with an anxious heart, and a few minutes later he stood beside a camp bed in his son’s quarters. He had lost his hat, his city coat was torn to rags, and his white shirt was stained with blood from the gash in his cheek; but he was unconscious of all this. Aynsley lay there, breathing feebly, with a drawn, white face and a small blue mark on his uncovered breast, while an ominous red froth gathered about his lips.
Clay placed his hand on the damp forehead, and the boy half opened his eyes.
“Do you know who I am?” his father asked.
“Sure!” Aynsley smiled feebly. “You said you wouldn’t fail me. I suppose you whipped them?”
He turned his head and coughed, and Clay beckoned Jevons.
“Help me raise his shoulders a bit, and then I guess we’d better put some wet bandages on him. As they’ve cut the ’phone wires, send somebody to the nearest ranch for a horse to bring a doctor from Vancouver.”
“Then send another man to Westminster, and we’ll take the first doctor who gets through or keep them both.”
They placed Aynsley in a position in which he could breathe more easily, and Clay gently wrapped him round with wetted rags.
“I don’t know if this is the right thing, but it’s all I can think of,” he said. “We want to keep down any internal bleeding.”
After this they waited anxiously for the doctor. Jevons presently crept out to restore order and to see that the fire had been extinguished; and Clay was left alone with his boy. There was no sound in the room where he sat, sternly watching over the unconscious form that lay so still on the bed.