Somewhat subdued by the simplicity of the proceeding and the loneliness of the adventure, he lay back on Judas' rump to negotiate the descent, and a bit shamefacedly rejoined his companions in the street.
Perhaps it was to cover his embarrassment that he opened the night's performance without loss of time.
Whirling Judas on his hind legs, he dashed spurs into him and roared down Toronto Street, shooting into the air as he went, with eight or ten shrieking, shooting companions behind him.
At the corner of South Railway Street the gas-lamp caught his eye. A quick shot scattered the globe, but Medicine Hat's gas, that gushed from an unlimited sea of natural supply six hundred feet down in the earth, continued to blink at him from an undamaged mantle.
"Thunder!" he snorted. "I must be drunk."
The next shot re-established his self-confidence.
Someone beside him banged a bullet through the transom of a store entrance, another brought down fragments of a telephone insulator, and two or three, catching sight of an open window, imprinted their valentines on the ceiling beyond.
Every door was closed and bolted, not for fear of looting—no cowboy would stoop to that—but in instinctive exclusion of lawlessness. So that the few caught on the street had no way of escape. Dakota recognised it first. Two or three well-directed shots into the pavement about their feet invariably drove pedestrians back against the wall, hands raised, a mere act of polite acceptance of the fact that the cowboys owned the town.
Two women scurried in a panic for a locked door, screamed, and turned blanched faces to the terror. Dakota raised his arm, shouted, and on the instant every mouth closed, every finger was held. With doffed Stetsons, guns pointing to the sky, a band of dare-devil cow-punchers trotted meekly past the terrified women, bowing as they went, and twenty yards beyond broke loose with redoubled vigour.
At the corner of Main Street every eye flicked across the tracks to the barracks, but things seemed lifeless there.