“Stop right there,” he said. “Throw every truss of hay down. The man who holds off when I tell him what to do is going to have trouble with the executive.”
It was a bold venture, and any sign of effort or unevenness of inflection would have rendered it futile, but the voice was sharp and ringing, and the fashion in which the horseman flung up his arm commanding. It was, also, tactful, for some of those who heard it had been drilled into unreflecting obedience, and there is in the native American the respect for a duly accredited leader, which discipline has further impressed upon the Teuton. Still, those who watched from the window felt that this was the crisis, and tightened their numbed fingers on the rifles, knowing that if the horseman failed they would shortly need them again. None of them, however, made any other movement, and Miss Schuyler, who, grasping Hetty’s hand, saw the dim figures standing rigid and intent, could only hear the snapping of the stove.
“Hetty,” she gasped, “I shall do something silly in another moment.”
The tension only lasted a moment or two. A man sprang up on the pole of the wagon, and a truss of hay went down. Another followed, and then, men who had also felt the strain and now felt it a relief to do anything, clustered about the wagon. In a few minutes it was empty, and the men who had been a mob turned to the one who had changed them into an organized body.
“What do you want now?” asked one of them.
“Run that wagon back where you got it from,” said Larry.
It was done, and when the clustering figures vanished amidst a rattle of wheels Torrance laid aside his rifle and sat down on the table.
“I guess there’ll be no more trouble, boys. That’s a thing there’s not many men could have done,” he added.
His daughter also sat down in the nearest chair, with Flora Schuyler’s hand still within her own. She had been very still while the suspense lasted, but she was trembling now, and her voice had a little quiver in it as she said, “Wasn’t he splendid, Flo?”
It was some minutes before Grant and the other men came back again, and fragments of what he said were audible. “Then, you can pick out four men, and we’ll hear them at the committee. I have two or three questions to ask you by and by. Half a dozen of you keep a look-out. The rest can get into the stable out of the frost.”