Questions, imprecations, and threats filled the room, and the crowd began to spread out slowly. His guns came out like a flash and he laughed with the elation that comes with impending battle. "The first man to start it'll drop," he said evenly. "Who's going to be the martyr?"

"I _won't_ leave town!" shouted Harlan. "I'll stay here if I'm killed for it!"

"I admire yore loyalty to principle, but you've got d.a.m.ned little sense," retorted the marshal. "You ain't no practical man. _Keep yore hands where they are!_"--his vibrant voice turned the shifting crowd to stone-like rigidity and he backed slowly toward the door, the poor light gleaming dully from the polished blue steel of his Colts.

Rugged, lion-like, charged to the finger tips with reckless courage and dare-devil self-confidence, his personality overflowed and dominated the room, almost hypnotic in its effect. He was but one against many, but he was the master, and they knew it; they had known it long enough to accept it without question, and the training now stood him in good stead.

For a moment he stood in the open doorway, keenly scrutinizing them for signs of danger, his unwavering guns charged with certain death and his strong face made stronger by the shadows in its hollows. "Before dark!"--and he was gone.

He left behind him deep silence, which endured for several moments.

"By the Lord, I _won't_!" cried Harlan, still staring at the door.

The spell was broken and a babel of voices filled the room, threats mingling with excuses, hot, vibrant, profane. These men were not cowards all the way through, but only when face to face with the master. They had flourished in a way by their wits alone on the same range with the outfits of the C-80 and the Double-Arrow, for individually they were "bad," and collectively they made a force of no mean strength. Edwards had landed among them like a thunderbolt and had proved his prowess, and they still held him in awesome respect. His reckless audacity and grim singleness of purpose had saved him on more than one occasion, for had he wavered once he would have been shot down without mercy. But gradually his enforcement of hampering laws became more and more intolerable, and their subordinated spirits were nearly on the point of revolt. When he faced them they resumed their former positions in relation to him--but once out of his sight they plotted to destroy him. Here was the crisis: it was now or never. They could not evade his ultimatum--it was obey or fight.

Submission was not to be thought of, for to flee would be to lose caste, and the story of such an act would follow them wherever they went, and brand them as cowards. Here they had lived, and here they would stay if possible, and to this end they discussed ways and means.

"Harlan's right!" emphatically announced Laramie Joe. "We can't pull out and have this foller us."

"We should have started it with a rush when he was in here," remarked Boston, regretfully.

Harlan stopped his pacing and faced them, shoving out a bottle of whiskey as an aid to his logic.

"That chance is past, an' I don't know but what it is a good thing," he began. "He was primed an' looking fer trouble, an' he'd sh.o.r.e got a few of us afore he went under. What we want is strategy--that's the game.

You fellers have got as much brains as him, an' if we thrash this thing out we can find a way to call his play--an' get him! No use of any of us getting plugged 'less we have to. But whatever we do we've got to start it right quick an' have it over before that Bar-20 gang comes back.

Harper, you an' Quinn go scouting--an' don't take no guns with you, neither. Act like you was. .h.i.tting the long trail out, an' work back here on a circle. See how many of his friends are in town. While you are gone the rest of us will hold a pow-wow an' take the kinks out of this game.

Chase along, an' don't waste no time."

"Good!" cried Slivers Lowe emphatically. "There's blamed few fellers in town now that have any use for him, for most of them are off on the ranges. Bet we won't have more than six to fight, an' there's that many of us here."

The scouts departed at once and the remaining four drew close in consultation.

"One more drink around and then no more till this trouble is over,"

Harlan said, pa.s.sing the bottle. The drinks, in view of the coming drought and the thirsty work ahead, were long and deep, and new courage and vindictiveness crept through their veins.

"Now here's the way it looks to me," Harlan continued, placing the bottle, untasted by himself, on the floor behind him. "We've got to work a surprise an' take Edwards an' his friends off their guard. That'll be easy if we're careful, because they think we ain't looking for fight.

When we get them out of the way we can take Jackson's store an' use one of the other shacks and wait for the Bar-20 to ride in. They'll canter right in, like they allus do, an' when they get close enough we'll open the game with a volley an' make every shot tell. 'T won't last long, 'cause every one of us will have his man named before they get here.

Then the few straddlers in town, seeing how easy we've gone an' handled it'll join us. We've got four men to come in yet, an' by the time the C-80 an' Double-Arrow hears about it we'll be fixed to drive 'em back home. We ought to be over a dozen strong by dark."

"That sounds good, all right," remarked Slivers, thoughtfully, "but can we do it that easy?"

"Course we can! We ain't fools, an' we all can shoot as well as them,"

snapped Laramie Joe, the most courageous of the lot. Laramie had taken only one drink, and that a small one, for he was wise enough to realize that he needed his wits as keen as he could have them.

"We can do it easy, if Edwards goes under first," hastily replied Harlan. "An' me an' Laramie will see to that part of it. If we don't get him, you all can hit the trail an' we won't be sore about it. That is, unless you are made of the stuff that stands up an' fights 'stead of running away. I reckon I ain't none mistaken in any of you. You'll all be there when things get hot."

"You can bet the shack _I_ won't do no trail-hitting," growled Boston, glancing at Slivers, who squirmed a little under the hint.

"Well, I'm glued to the crowd; you can't lose me, fellers," Slivers remarked, re-crossing his legs uneasily. "Are we going to begin it from here?"

"We ought to spread out cautions and surround Jackson's, or wherever Edwards is," Laramie Joe suggested. "That's my--"

"Yo're right! Now you've hit it plumb on the head!" interrupted Harlan, slapping Laramie heartily across the back. "What did I tell you about our brains?" he cried, enthusiastically. He had been on the point of suggesting that plan of operations when Laramie took the words out of his mouth. "I'd never thought of that, Laramie," he lied, his face beaming. "Why, we've got 'em licked to a finish right now!"

"This _is_ a hummer of a game," laughed Slivers. "But how about the Bar-20 crowd?"

"I've told you that already," replied the proprietor.

"You bet it's a hummer," cried Boston, reaching for the whiskey bottle under cover of the excitement and enthusiasm.

Harlan pushed it away with his foot and raised his clenched fist. "Do you wonder I didn't think of that plan?" he demanded. "Ain't I been too mad to think at all? Hain't I seen my friends treated like dogs, an'

made to swaller insults when I couldn't raise my hand to stop it? Didn't I see Jerry Brown chased out of my place like a wild beast? If we are what we've been called, then we'll sneak out of town with our tails atween our laigs; but if we're men we'll stay right here an' cram the insults down the throats of them that made 'em! If we're _men_ let's prove it an' make them liars swaller our lead."

"My sentiments an' allus was!" roared Slivers, slapping Harlan's shoulder.

"We're men, all right, an' we'll show 'em it, too!"

At that instant the door opened and four guns covered it before it had swung a foot.

"Put 'em down--it's Quinn!" exclaimed the man in the doorway, flinching a bit. "All right, Jed," he called over his shoulder to the man who crowded him. After Quinn came Big Jed and Harper brought up the rear.

They had no more than shaken the water from their sombreros when the back door let in Charley Rich and his two companions, Frank and Tom Nolan. While greetings were being exchanged and the existing conditions explained to the newcomers, Harper and Quinn led Harlan to one side and reported, the proprietor smiling and nodding his head wisely. And while he listened, Slivers surrept.i.tiously corralled the whiskey bottle and when the last man finished with it there was nothing in it but air.

"Well, boys," exclaimed Harlan, "things are our way. Quinn, here, met Joe Barr, of the C-80, who said Converse an' four other fellers, all friends of Edwards, stopped at the ranch an' won't be back home till the storm stops. Harper saw Fred Neil going back to his ranch, so all we've got to figger on is the marshal, Barr, an' Jackson, an' they're all in Jackson's store. Lacey might cut in, since he'd sell more liquor if I went under, but he can't do very much if he does take a hand. Now we'll get right at it." The whole thing was gone over thoroughly and in detail, positions a.s.signed and a signal agreed upon. Seeing that weapons were in good condition after their long storage in the cellar, and that cartridge belts were full, the ten men left the room one at a time or in pairs, Harlan and Laramie Joe being the last. And both Harlan and Laramie delayed long enough to take the precaution of placing horses where they would be handy in case of need.

CHAPTER XVIII

HARLAN STRIKES

Joe Barr laughingly replied to Johnny Nelson's growled remarks about the condition of things in general and tried to soothe him, but Johnny was unsoothable.

"An' I've been telling him right along that he's got the best of it,"

complained Jackson in a weary voice. "Got a measly hole through his shoulder--good Lord! if it had gone a little lower!" he finished with a show of exasperation.

"An' ain't I been telling you all along that it ain't the measly hole in my shoulder that's got me on the prod?" retorted Johnny, with more earnestness than politeness. "But why couldn't I go with my friends after Jerry an' get shot later if I had to get it at all? Look what I'm missing, roped an' throwed in this cussed ten-by-ten shack while they're having a little excitement."

"Yo're missing some blamed nasty weather, Kid," replied the marshal.

"You ain't got no kick coming at all. Why, I got soaked clean through just going down to the Oasis."

"Well, I'm kicking, just the same," snapped Johnny. "An' furthermore, I don't see n.o.body big enough to stop me, neither--did you all get that?"

The rear door opened and Fred Neal looked in. "Hey, Barr; come out an'

gimme a hand in the corral. Busted my cinch all to pieces half a mile out--an' how the devil it ever busted like that is--" the door slammed shut and softened his monologue.

"Would you listen to that!" snorted Barr in an injured tone. "Didn't I go an' tell him near a month ago that his cussed cinch wouldn't hold no better'n a piece of wet paper?" His complaint added materially to the atmosphere of sullen discontent pervading the room. "An' now I gotter go out in this rain an'--" the slam of the door surpa.s.sed anything yet attempted in that line of endeavor. Jackson grabbed a can of corn as it jarred off the shelf behind him and directed a pleasing phrase after the peevish Barr.

"Say, won't somebody please smile?" gravely asked Edwards. "I never saw such a happy, cheerful bunch before."