When the door fell in, Bear Cat Stacy stepped across the splintered woodwork, unarmed save for the holstered pistol in his belt. He made a clear target for at his back was the red and yellow glare of blazing flambeaux. Yet no finger pressed its trigger because the mad uselessness of resistance proclaimed itself. Like flood-water running through a broken dyke, a black and steady stream flowed around him into the house, lining the walls with a mourning border of unidentified human figures.
Their funereal like had never before been seen in the hills, and they seemed to come endlessly with an uncanny silence and precision.
They were not ghosts but men; men draped in rubber ponchos or slickers that fell, glinting with the sheen of melted snow, to their knees. Their black felt hats were pointed into cones and under the brims their eyes looked out through masks of black cloth that betrayed no feature. Except for Bear Cat Stacy himself and George Kelly, who were both unmasked, no man was recognized—and no voice sounded to distinguish its possessor.
The mauling of the battering ram on the rear door ceased and a pulseless quiet followed save for the tramp-tramp of feet as yet other spectral and monotonously similar figures slipped through the door and fell into enveloping ranks along the walls, and for the woman's half-smothered hysteria of fright.
Angered by her disconcerting sobs, Jim Towers seized his wife's shoulder and shook her brutally. "Damn ye, shet up afore I hurts ye," he snarled, and, as he finished, Bear Cat Stacy's open hand smote him across the lips and brought a trickle of blood. Into the eyes of the trapped man came an evil glitter of ineffectual rage, and from an upper room rose the wail of awakened children.
"Go up sta'rs, ma'am, an' comfort ther youngsters," Turner quietly directed the woman. "No harm hain't a-goin' ter come ter you—ner them." Then, wheeling, he ripped out a command to the huddled prisoners.
"Drap them guns!"
When the surrendered arms had been gathered in, Stacy drew his captives into line and nodded to George Kelly, who stepped forward, his face working with a strong emotion. One could see that only the effect of acknowledged discipline stifled his longing to leap at the throat of Jim Towers.
"Kin ye identify any one man or more hyar, es them thet burned down yore dwellin' house? If ye kin, point him out."
Walking to a position from which he directly confronted Towers, Kelly raised a finger unsteady with rage and thrust it almost into the face itself. Then the hand grew steady and remained accusingly poised.