"No," he said. "We haven't come to wreck the town. I've another plan if
you're more than two minutes getting in."

The axes whirled faster, and at last a man turned breathlessly. "Get
ready, boys," he said. "One more on the bolt head, Jake, and we're in!"

A brawny man twice whirled the hissing blade about his head, and as he
swung forward with both hands on the haft with a dull crash the wedge of
tempered steel clove the softer metal. The great door tilted and went
down, and Breckenridge sprang past the axe-men through the opening. His
voice came back exultantly out of the shadowy building. "It was the old
country sent you the first man in!"

The men's answer was a shout as they followed him, with a great trampling
down the corridor, but the rest of the building was very silent, and
nobody disputed their passage until at last a man with grey hair appeared
with a lantern behind an iron grille.

"Open that thing," said somebody.

The man smiled drily. "I couldn't do it if I wanted to. I've given my keys
away."

One or two of the homesteaders glanced a trifle anxiously behind them. The
corridor was filling up, and it dawned upon them that if anything barred
their egress they would be helpless.

"Then what are you stopping for?" asked somebody.

"It's in my contract," said the jailer quietly. "I was raised in Kentucky.
You don't figure I'm scared of you?"

"No use for talking," said a man. "You can't argue with him. Go ahead with
your axes and beat the blamed thing in."

It cost them twenty minutes' strenuous toil; but the grille went down, and
two of the foremost seized the jailer.

"Let him go," said Grant quietly. "Now, we can't fool time away with you.
Where's the Sheriff?"

"I don't quite know," said the jailer, and the contempt in his voice
answered the question.

Grant laughed a little. "Well," he said, "I guess he's sensible. Now, what
you have got to do is to bring out the two homesteaders as quick as you
can."

"I told you I couldn't do it," said the other man.

"You listen to me. We are going to take those men out, if we have to pull
this place to pieces until we find them. That, it's quite plain, would let
the others go, and you would lose the whole of your prisoners instead of
two of them. Tell us where you put them, and you can keep the rest."

"That's square?"

"Oh, yes," said Grant. "There are quite enough men of their kind loose in
this country already."

"Straight on," said the ja