"We'll give you two minutes in which to make up your mind. Then, if you can't climb down, and anything unpleasant happens, it will be on your head. Can't you see you haven't the ghost of a show?" said one.
Turning my eyes a moment, I noticed a fan-shaped flicker swinging like a comet across the dusky waste far down the straight-ruled track, and when a man I knew held up his watch beneath a lamp, I had almost come to a decision. If the sergeant had shown any sign of weakness it is perhaps possible that decision might have been reversed; but Mackay stood as though cast in iron, and equally unyielding. I would at least have no blood shed on my account, and would not leave my friends to bear the consequences of their unthinking generosity. Meanwhile, stock-rider and teamster were waiting in strained attention, and there was still almost a minute left to pass when a light hand touched my shoulder, and Lucille Haldane, appearing from behind me, said: "You must do something. Go forward and speak to them immediately." She was trembling with eagerness, but the station agent stood on my other side, and he was woodenly stolid.
"Put down that weapon. I will speak to them," I said.
"You're healthier here," was the suspicious answer; and chiefly conscious of the appeal and anxiety in Lucille Haldane's eyes, I turned upon him.
"Stand out of my way—confound you!" I shouted.
The man fingered the pistol uncertainly, and I could have laughed at his surmise that the sight of it would have held me then. Before, even if he wished it, his finger could close on the trigger, I had him by the wrist, and the weapon fell with a clash. Then I lifted him bodily and flung him upon the track, while, as amid a shouting, Cotton sprang forward, Mackay roared: "Bide ye, let him go!"
The shouting ceased suddenly when I stood between my friends and the sergeant with hands held up. "I'll never forget what you have done, boys; but it is no use," I said; and paused to gather breath, amid murmurs of surprise and consternation. "In the first place, I can't drag you into this trouble."
"We'll take the chances willing," a voice said, and there was a grim chorus of approval. "We've borne enough, and it's time we did something."
"Can't you see that if I bolted now it would suit nobody better than Lane? Boys, you know I'm innocent——"
Again a clamor broke out, and somebody cried: "It was Lane's own man who did it, if anybody fired Gaspard's Trail!"