tay here if I'm killed
for it!"

"I admire yore loyalty to principle, but you've got damned 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.