He dropped the revolver on the floor, and fled from the room.
The first feeling of the crowd of men was utter astonishment, but in a moment or two this gave place to half-contemptuous sympathy. What expression this sentiment would have found it is impossible to say, for just then Bill Hitchcock observed with a sneer:
“As he's run, I may as well walk;” and he stepped towards the bar-room.
Instantly Crocker threw himself in front of him with his face on fire.
“Walk—will ye?” he burst out, the long-repressed rage flaming up—“walk! when you've jumped the best man in Garotte—walk! No, by God, you'll crawl, d'ye hear? crawl—right out of this camp, right now!” and he dropped his revolver on Hitchcock's breast.
Then came a wild chorus of shouts.
“That's right! That's the talk! Crawl, will ye! Down on yer hands and knees. Crawl, damn ye! Crawl!” and a score of revolvers covered the stranger.
For a moment he stood defiant, looking his assailants in the eyes. His face seemed to have grown thinner, and his moustache twitched with the snarling movement of a brute at bay. Then he was tripped up and thrown forwards amid a storm of, “Crawl, damn ye—crawl!” And so Hitchcock crawled, on hands and knees, out of Doolan's.
Lawyer Rablay, too, was never afterwards seen in Garotte. Men said his nerves had “give out.”