d the jail-yard
fence was three feet deep with people hanging to it and hanging about
one another's necks--all waiting. All morning they waited silently and
patiently, and now the fatal noon was hardly an hour away and not a
Falin nor a Tolliver had been seen. Every Falin had been disarmed of his
Winchester as he came in, and as yet no Tolliver had entered the town,
for wily old Judd had learned of Hale's tactics and had stayed outside
the town for his own keen purpose. As the minutes passed, Hale was
beginning to wonder whether, after all, old Judd had come to believe
that the odds against him were too great, and had told the truth when he
set afoot the rumour that the law should have its way; and it was just
when his load of anxiety was beginning to lighten that there was a
little commotion at the edge of the Court House and a great red-headed
figure pushed through the crowd, followed by another of like build, and
as the people rapidly gave way and fell back, a line of Falins slipped
along the wall and stood under the port-holes-quiet, watchful, and
determined. Almost at the same time the crowd fell back the other way
up the street, there was the hurried tramping of feet and on came the
Tollivers, headed by giant Judd, all armed with Winchesters--for old
Judd had sent his guns in ahead--and as the crowd swept like water into
any channel of alley or doorway that was open to it, Hale saw the yard
emptied of everybody but the line of Falins against the wall and the
Tollivers in a body but ten yards in front of them. The people on the
roofs and in the trees had not moved at all, for they were out of range.
For a moment old Judd's eyes swept the windows and port-holes of the
Court House, the windows of the jailer's house, the line of guards about
the jail, and then they dropped to the line of Falins and glared with
contemptuous hate into the leaping blue eyes of old Buck Falin, and for
that moment there was silence. In that silence and as silently as the
silence itself issued swiftly from the line of guards twelve youngsters
with Winchesters, repeating shot-guns, and in a minute six were facing
the Falins and six facing the Tollivers, each with his shot-gun at his
hip. At the head of them stood Hale, his face a pale image, as hard
as though cut from stone, his head bare, and his hand and his hip
weaponless. In all that crowd there was not a man or a woman who had not
seen or heard of him, for the power of the guard that was