The stranger, Harris, was nearest the door, and essayed to pass out, but Overton touched him on the arm.
“Not just yet,” he said hurriedly. “Don’t come out or others will follow, and there’ll be trouble. Keep them in some way.”
Then the door closed. The concertina sobbed and shrieked out its notes, and drowned a murmur of voices on the outside. One man lay senseless close to the doorstep, and four more men with two women stood a little apart from him.
“If another shot is fired, your houses will be torn down over your heads to-morrow,” said Overton, threateningly; “and some of you will not be needing an earthly habitation by that time, either.”
“Fury! It is Overton!” muttered one of the men to another. “They told us he wasn’t in this thing.”
“What for you care?” demanded the angry tones of a Dutch woman. “What difference that make—eh? If so be as we want to dance—well, then, we go in and dance—you make no mistake.”
But the men were not so aggressive. The most audacious was the senseless one, who had fired the revolver and whom Overton had promptly and quietly knocked down. 117
“I don’t think you men want any trouble of this sort,” he remarked, and ignored the women entirely. “If you’ve been told that I’m not in this, that’s just where some one told you a lie; and if it’s a woman, you should know better than to follow her lead. If these women get through that door, it will be when I’m an angel. I’m doing you all a good turn by not letting the boys in there know about this. No religion could save you, if I turned them loose on you; so you had better get away quiet, and quick.”
The men seemed to appreciate his words.
“That’s so,” mumbled one.