Breckenridge laid a restraining hand upon his arm, but he shook it off, and moving forward stopped just outside the threshold. The lad could not see his face, but he noticed that he stood very straight, with his head thrown back a trifle, and that one or two of those without edged farther into the shadowy crowd. Glancing behind him, he also saw the cook leaning forward on the stairway with the rifle glinting in his hands.
“Well?” said Grant, and his voice rang commandingly.
“We have come for the dollars,” said a man. “We want them, and they’re ours.”
“Then, you must ask your committee for them. They are not in my house.”
“Bluff!” said somebody; and an angry clamour broke out.
“Hand them out,” cried one voice, “before we burn the place for you.”
Larry swung up one hand commandingly, and Breckenridge felt a thrill of pride when, as if in tribute to his comrade’s fearlessness, a sudden silence followed. Larry stood alone, statuesque in poise, with arm stretched out in the face of the hostile crowd, and once more the respect the men had borne him asserted itself.
“You will listen to me, boys, and it may be the last time I shall speak to you,” he said. “You know that right back from the beginning I have done the best I could for you, and now I feel it in me that if you will wait just a little longer the State will do more than I could ever do. Can’t you understand that if you go round destroying railroad-trestles, shooting cattle, and burning ranches, you are only playing into the hand of your enemies, and the very men in the legislature who would, if you kept your patience, make your rights sure to you, will be forced to turn the cavalry loose on you? Can’t you sit tight another month or two, instead of throwing all we have fought for away?”
The silence that followed the speech lasted for a space of seconds, and then, when Breckenridge hoped Grant might still impose prudence upon the crowd, there were murmurs of doubt and suspicion. They grew rapidly louder, and a man stepped out from the rest.
“The trouble is that we don’t believe in you, Larry,” he said. “You were with us solid one time, but that was before the cattle-barons bought you.”