reathing space. They were unheeded,
and when the banker presently recovered consciousness he was lifted to his
feet and stood, pressed close to the building, swaying dizzily, pale, weak
and shaken.

Word had gone through the crowd that it was not a robbery, for there were
many there who knew Trevison; they shouted greetings to him, and he
answered them, standing back of Corrigan, grim and somber.

Foremost in the crowd was Mullarky, who on another day had seen a fight at
this same spot. He had taken a stand directly in front of the door of the
bank, and had been using his eyes and his wits rapidly since his coming.
And when two or three men from the crowd edged forward and tried to push
their way to Corrigan, Mullarky drew a pistol, leaped to the door landing
beside Trevison and trained his weapon, on them.

"Stand back, or I'll plug you, sure as I'm a foot high! There's hell to
pay here, an' me friend gets a square deal--whatever he's done!"

"Right!" came other voices from various points in the crowd; "a square
deal--no interference!"

Judge Lindman came out into the street, urged by curiosity. He had stepped
down from the doorway of the courthouse and had instantly been carried
with the crowd to a point directly in front of Corrigan and Trevison,
where he stood, bare-headed, pale, watching silently. Corrigan saw him,
and smiled faintly at him. The easterner's eye sought out several faces in
the crowd near him, and when he finally caught the gaze of a certain
individual who had been eyeing him inquiringly for some moments, he slowly
closed an eye and moved his head slightly toward the rear of the building.
Instantly the man whistled shrilly with his fingers, as though to summon
someone far down the street, and slipping around the edge of the crowd
made his way around to the rear of the bank building, where he was joined
presently by other men, roughly garbed, who carried pistols. One of them
climbed in through a window, opened the door, and the others--numbering
now twenty-five or thirty, dove into the room.

Out in front a silence had fallen. Trevison had lifted a hand and the
crowd strained its ears to hear.

"I've caught a crook!" declared Trevison, the frenzy of fight still
surging through his veins. "He's not a cheap crook--I give him credit for
that. All he wants to do is to steal the whole county. He'll do it, too,
if we don't head him off. I'll tell you more about him in a minute.
There's another of his