and came
down with a terrific clatter in a wild disorder of kicking hoofs and
splintered wood. But a crowd of men fell upon her, tugging at the bit,
sitting on her head, shouting, gesticulating. For five minutes she
struggled and fought; then, by degrees, she recovered herself, drawing
great sobbing breaths at long intervals that all but burst the girths,
rolling her eyes in bewildered, supplicating fashion, trembling in every
muscle, and starting and shrinking now and then like a young girl in
hysterics. At last she lay quiet. The men allowed her to struggle to her
feet. The saddle was removed and she was led to one of the empty stalls,
where she remained the rest of the evening, her head low, her pasterns
quivering, turning her head apprehensively from time to time, showing
the white of one eye and at long intervals heaving a single prolonged
sigh.

And an hour later the dance was progressing as evenly as though nothing
in the least extraordinary had occurred. The incident was closed--that
abrupt swoop of terror and impending death dropping down there from out
the darkness, cutting abruptly athwart the gayety of the moment, come
and gone with the swiftness of a thunderclap. Many of the women had gone
home, taking their men with them; but the great bulk of the crowd still
remained, seeing no reason why the episode should interfere with the
evening's enjoyment, resolved to hold the ground for mere bravado, if
for nothing else. Delaney would not come back, of that everybody was
persuaded, and in case he should, there was not found wanting fully half
a hundred young men who would give him a dressing down, by jingo! They
had been too surprised to act when Delaney had first appeared, and
before they knew where they were at, the buster had cleared out. In
another minute, just another second, they would have shown him--yes,
sir, by jingo!--ah, you bet!

On all sides the reminiscences began to circulate. At least one man in
every three had been involved in a gun fight at some time of his life.
"Ah, you ought to have seen in Yuba County one time--" "Why, in Butte
County in the early days--" "Pshaw! this to-night wasn't anything! Why,
once in a saloon in Arizona when I was there--" and so on, over and over
again. Osterman solemnly asserted that he had seen a greaser sawn in two
in a Nevada sawmill. Old Broderson had witnessed a Vigilante lynching in
'55 on California Street in San Francisco. Dyke recalled how once in his
engin