tore Hale pointed out and
peering cautiously around the edge of an open window at the wooden gate
of the ramshackle calaboose. Several Falins were there--led by young
Buck, whom Hale recognized as the red-headed youth at the head of the
tearing horsemen who had swept by him that late afternoon when he was
coming back from his first trip to Lonesome Cove. The old man gritted
his teeth as he looked and he put one of his huge pistols on a table
within easy reach and kept the other clenched in his right fist. From
down the street came five horsemen, led by John Hale. Every man carried
a double-barrelled shotgun, and the old man smiled and his respect for
Hale rose higher, high as it already was, for nobody--mountaineer
or not--has love for a hostile shotgun. The Falins, armed only with
pistols, drew near.

"Keep back!" he heard Hale say calmly, and they stopped--young Buck
alone going on.

"We want that feller," said young Buck.

"Well, you don't get him," said Hale quietly. "He's our prisoner. Keep
back!" he repeated, motioning with the barrel of his shotgun--and young
Buck moved backward to his own men, The old man saw Hale and another
man--the sergeant--go inside the heavy gate of the stockade. He saw a
boy in a cap, with a pistol in one hand and a strapped set of books in
the other, come running up to the men with the shotguns and he heard one
of them say angrily:

"I told you not to come."

"I know you did," said the boy imperturbably.

"You go on to school," said another of the men, but the boy with the cap
shook his head and dropped his books to the ground. The big gate opened
just then and out came Hale and the sergeant, and between them young
Dave--his eyes blinking in the sunlight.

"Damn ye," he heard Dave say to Hale. "I'll get even with you fer this
some day"--and then the prisoner's eyes caught the horses and shotguns
and turned to the group of Falins and he shrank back utterly dazed.
There was a movement among the Falins and Devil Judd caught up his other
pistol and with a grim smile got ready. Young Buck had turned to his
crowd:

"Men," he said, "you know I never back down"--Devil Judd knew that, too,
and he was amazed by the words that followed-"an' if you say so, we'll
have him or die; but we ain't in our own state now. They've got the law
and the shotguns on us, an' I reckon we'd better go slow."

The rest seemed quite willing to go slow, and, as they put their pistols
up, Devil Judd laughed i