Every good and honorable trait seemed lost out of her neighbors. She saw the whole country but as a refuge for criminals, ungovernable youths, and unsexed women—a wilderness of those who had no regard for any code of morals which interfered with their own desires. Her memories of the past freshened as she listened. In such wise she had shuddered, as a child, while troops of celebrating cowboys rode up and down the streets. In such wise, too, the better (and more timid) element of the town had put out their lights and retired, leaving their drunken helots and the marshal to fight it out in vague tumult.
A few of the hotel guests had gone to bed, but the women were up, excited and nervous, starting at every fresh outburst of whooping, knowing that their sons or husbands were out in the street “to see the fun,” and that they might meet trouble.
At last Lee discerned her mother returning from Halsey’s, followed by three men. Withdrawing from the little porch whereon she had been standing, she reentered the house to meet her mother in the hall. “Where is Mr. Cavanagh?” she asked.
“Out in the dining-room. You see, Mike Halsey is no kind o’ use. He vamoosed and left Ross down there alone, with his two prisoners and the lights likely to be turned out on him. So I offered the caffy as a calaboose. They are sure in for a long and tedious night.”
Lee was alarmed at her mother’s appearance. “You must go to bed. You look ghastly.”
“I reckon I’d better lie down for a little while, but I can’t sleep. Ross may need me. There isn’t a man to help him but me, and that loafer Ballard is full of gall. He’s got it in for Ross, and will make trouble if he can.”
“What can we do?”
“Shoot!” replied Lize, with dry brevity. “I wouldn’t mind a chance to plug some of the sweet citizens of this town. I owe them one or two.”
With this sentence in her ears, Lee Virginia went to her bed, but not to slumber. Her utter inability either to control her mother’s action or to influence that of the mob added to her uneasiness.
The singing, shouting, trampling of the crowd went on, and once a group of men halted just outside her window, and she heard Neill Ballard noisily, drunkenly arguing as to the most effective method of taking the prisoners. His utterances, so profane and foul, came to her like echoes from out an inferno. The voices were all at the moment like the hissing of serpents, the snarling of tigers. How dared creatures of this vile type use words of contempt against Ross Cavanagh?