But, as he was still growling inwardly with disgust, the attorney started to step back, reeled and crumpled limply to the floor of the platform.
CHAPTER V
After the momentary shock of sudden panic the scattered auditors began shamefacedly drifting back for inquiry and a solution.
Newt Spooner saw General Braden and a companion carrying the limp figure of the mountain lawyer down the stairway of the platform and heard them cursing the lawlessness of the mountaineers who, "having made an excursion from their own shambles were waging their damnable war on the streets of a civilized town."
He saw the crowd opening to let out several men who bore another prostrate figure, and, as they passed, one glance at the face, which had fallen back, loose-jawed, between the supporting arms, told him that some one had "gotten" Jake Falerin. Then he saw the town marshal, supported by half-dozen volunteer deputies, fighting for a passage through the throng with the prisoners, whose bodies they shielded with their own. This group made its way up the stairs, and flattened itself against the court-house wall.
Behind the drawn revolvers of the guard, the late convict recognized the faces of Red Newton and his accomplice. Already the crowd, which had a moment before been in panic-stricken flight, was pressing menacingly forward, and talk of lynching ran like wildfire from mouth to mouth. The officer was brandishing his pistol, and two of the volunteers were holding aloft, in show of force, the revolvers they had taken from the captives, whom they were waiting to slip through the court-house halls to the jail. Someone had gone around to unlock the doors.
The prisoners themselves stood stoically enough with mask-like faces, and if the roar of bluegrass wrath intimidated them, their eyes and lips showed no trace.
The countenance of Red Newton even wore a satirical smile as he commented to the other Spooner, loudly enough to be heard around a wide radius:
"These-here furriners air shore hell-bent on law an' order, hain't they? They're bounden fer ter have hit, even if they has ter lynch folks ter git hit."