ble.

Instantly the shuffling of feet grated its signal of an awakening
apprehension--an uneasiness which had been temporarily lulled. There was
an instant, after that, of dead hush, and then a twisting of necks as
all eyes went to the door.

The men on each side of the house drew a little closer and more
compactly together, widening and emphasizing the line of the aisle
between; becoming two distinct crowds where there had been one, loosely
joined. Hands gestured instinctively toward guns laid by, and halted in
cautious abeyance. Through the cobwebbed spaciousness and breathless
quiet of the place sounded the ill-omened quaver of a barn owl.

In the door stood Asa Gregory, his hands hanging at his sides with a
studied inertness as his eyes travelled slowly, appraisingly, about the
place. His attitude and expression alike were schooled into passiveness,
but as he saw another figure rise from just in front of the stage and
stand in momentary irresolution, the muscles of his jaw hardened and
into his eyes flashed a defiant gleam. His lids contracted to the
narrowness of slits, as though struggling to shut out some sudden and
insufferable glare. His chest heaved in a gasp-like breath and the hands
which he sought to keep hanging, slowly closed and clenched as muscles
tauten under an electric shock. Then, as if in obedience to impulses
beyond volition, the right hand came upward toward the left
armpit--where his pistol holster should have been.

At the sight of his enemy rising there before him, Asa Gregory had seen
red, and the length of the aisle away, Tom Carr stood struggling with an
identical transport of reeling self-control. Like a reflection in a
mirror his face too blackened in sinister hatred and his hand too moved
toward the empty holster.

The strained tableau held only for a breathing space, but it was long
enough for acceptance as a signal. It was long enough to afford the
orator of the evening a swift, photographic impression of flambeaux
giving back the glint of drawn pistols to right and left of the aisle;
of the ducking of timid heads; of a crowd holding a pose as tense and
ready as runners set on their marks--yet breathlessly awaiting the overt
signal.

It was long enough, too, for Boone Wellver, crouched in the rafters, to
close one eye and sight his rifle on the back of Tom Carr--and to draw a
shallow breath of nerve-tension and resolution as his finger balanced
the trigger--a finger which sheer