y irresistibly
gravitated toward the door of the private room, where they stood with
thumbs hooked in their belts in suggestive proximity to the butts of
their peacemakers.

Somehow the atmosphere was charged with expectancy and a strange
constraint had fallen on the usually boisterous throng. Something
unusual was taking place in that private room, but Big Bart's privacy
was a thing not healthy to violate; and then again there was something
peculiarly discouraging to idle curiosity in the grim faces of the
bronzed quartet just outside the door. There was not a man in that
assemblage who would not have given half of his hoard for one peep into
that room, and similarly there was not a man of them who for thrice that
consideration would have essayed such a breach of etiquette.

And up at the county jail another of the Lazy K outfit was cursing his
luck and sarcastically requesting a horde of wretches in the basement
dungeons to "holler a few, so's I kin use up a bunch o' these damn
hulls. Holler just oncet!"

In an unlighted room on the second story of the little hotel four short
blocks away, a woman sat crouched behind the curtains of a window which
commanded fully the Palace saloon. She was still dressed in the
inconspicuous dark robe in which she had watched the sadly aborted
attempt at the jail a short half-hour before. Feverishly had she
witnessed the stealthy approach of the scant dozen of slinking forms
which had silently stolen into the frowning portals which had
accommodatingly opened for their ingress; breathlessly had she waited
until there came the sound of savage oaths, muffled thuds and the clamor
of men in mortal combat. She had almost screamed in frantic apprehension
as the invading force had been suddenly reinforced by four other figures
with gleaming weapons in their hands. She would have called out warning
of this new and terrible peril to the now certainly doomed prisoners,
but her tongue clave to the roof of her mouth and she only sobbed and
swayed in hysterical rage at the balking of her revenge. But suddenly to
her amazement there came forth seven men clad in vaquero costume, who
laughed boisterously and shot their revolvers aimlessly into the air.
She gave a sharp gasp of relief as she heard a familiar voice say with
unfeigned regret:

"Why, I've hed moah fun at a dawg fite! D'yuh reckon that theah was evah
ary white man, ceptin' he were sick er asleep, that passed in his chips
to sech a passd