Carl sprang up, knocking his chair over backward. There was a roar outside; it came down Main Street like a flood, and Gannon snatched the shotgun down from its pegs. “What the hell?” Carl cried.

“Lock the damned door!” Morgan said, and Carl leaped to do it, and flung the key inside the cell. Gannon ran to the door. Behind him he heard Morgan laughing like an idiot.

Miners were streaming around the corner out of Southend Street, more were coming out of the Glass Slipper to join them, and all of them were yelling.

Gannon held the shotgun out before him with his finger tight on the trigger and felt the sweat starting from his face. “Hold off!” he shouted, “Hold off!” the words lost in the tumult. Beside him Carl was shouting too. Then the leaders halted.

Gradually the whole mass came to a halt, forming a broad semicircle on the boardwalk and in the street around the front of the jail, all of them yelling still, until Carl raised his Colt and fired into the air.

“Now, what the hell?” Carl said, in the silence.

There was a disturbance in the front rank and Frenchy Martin stepped forward through the settling dust; then old man Heck came out.

“Now you turn over that son of a bitch in there, Deputy!” Frenchy Martin cried.

“He is our meat and no business of yours at all!” old man Heck shouted. “Dirty dog killed Frank Brunk and we are—”

The clamor began again and the miners crowded forward. Gannon thrust the muzzle of the shotgun against the belly of the one nearest him. Slowly the shouting died.

“—fair fight,” Frenchy Martin was saying. “And then Frank got him down and that lookout of his shot Frank through the head!”

“Where’s Murch?” someone yelled. “Somebody’d better get that wall-eyed son too!”

“He lit out on a horse!” another replied. “He was moving!”

“You turn over that bloody-bellied gambler, hear!” old Heck said. “I mean, we will tromp you down, Schroeder!”

Gannon swung the shotgun toward Heck. Another miner made a grab for it and he slammed the barrel against the man’s elbow. “Get back!” he said.

Somebody was singing, “We’ll hang Tom Morgan to a sour apple tree!”

Frenchy Martin jumped up on the tie rail, and, clinging to a post, motioned for silence. “Boys, are we going to let them stop us? Are we going to take out that murdering bastard or not? Good old Frank was a friend to us all, and MacDonald set Morgan to kill him, most likely.” The miners roared.

Gannon looked toward Carl, for this had better be stopped, and Carl leaped forward and clubbed the barrel of his Colt down behind Martin’s ear. Martin fell forward into the street, where the miners caught him; the yelling increased in volume and violence. Old man Heck was shaking his fist. Carl fired into the air again. Gannon began edging toward old Heck again, to buffalo him next. He was only worried that it would get dark before they could run the mob off. Already the light was fading with the sun gone.

“Listen!” Carl shouted. “There’s been men took out of here and hung but not while I was here and by God there won’t be, either! Because I can play hell with a good lot of you and Johnny will just make pure mincemeat with that shotgun. Now; if you want Morgan that bad maybe you can get him, but it’s going to cost you dear. You hear now!”

The solid roar went up again, the shoving back and forth. Old man Heck turned and cupped his hands to his mouth to yell, and Gannon slammed the shotgun barrel against the side of his head. He fell to his knees.

“Watch that bull moose over there!” Carl cried, and Gannon swung the shotgun toward a big bearded miner who was moving toward him.

“Back off!”

The miner retreated a step, grinning. Past him, over the heads of the men in the street, Gannon saw riders coming down Main Street from the direction of the rim. They were riding abreast, two ranks of them, and they filled the street. Heads began turning toward them. Abruptly the miners fell silent.

“It’s MacDonald!” Carl said.

MacDonald was in the lead, on a white-faced horse, wearing a checked suit and his hard-hat. In the gathering dust Gannon began to recognize the other riders: Chet and Wash Haggin, and Jack Cade, Walt Harrison, Quint Whitby, Jock Hennessey, Pecos Mitchell, and more, and still more in the second rank. Some of them had Winchesters over their arms, and belts of cartridges hung from their saddle-horns.

Abe McQuown was not with them, Gannon saw, straining his eyes; nor Curley. The big miner near him was now flattened against the wall as though he wished he could push back on through it.

“He has brought his Regulators in to do us all down!” Gannon heard someone say. The miners in the street began to retreat, some, on the fringes of the crowd, fading back into Southend Street. Now there was no sound but the pad of oncoming hoofs in the dust.

“MacDonald’s come to run his agitators out himself,” Carl said. “Damned if he isn’t, and damned if it is pleasant to be bailed out by such a bunch.”

Someone yelled, “Morgan already did your dirty work for you, Mister Mac!”

“Hold together, fellows!”

“Damned if we will run before a pack of rustlers, MacDonald!”

Carl said mournfully, “What the hell are we going to do, Johnny?” and Gannon took a deep breath and then ducked under the tie rail and jumped down into the street. He moved through the miners as rapidly as he could, pushing right and left with the shotgun butt as though it were an oar. Sweating, dusty faces turned to stare at him. There was muttering behind him. A hand reached out to grasp his shotgun.

“Let me by,” he said, and the hand fell away.

“Let the deputy through, boys,” a voice said, and the miners began to move more rapidly aside before him. He came out of the mob not fifty feet from the riders, and he walked on through the dust straight toward MacDonald.

“Pull up!” he said, bringing the shotgun muzzle up to bear on the white-faced horse. MacDonald reined in and the horse stood steady, swinging his head around to feign a bite at MacDonald’s leg. The others reined up also. Wash Haggin gazed contemptuously down at him, Chet Haggin grinned a little, Jack Cade lifted his round-crowned hat and ran his fingers through his hair, his dark, whiskered face sullen. Gannon looked from face to face. Those in the rear rank were the kind of San Pablo scum that even Abe McQuown was too proud to ride with. Except for the Haggins they were all bad ones, but after the first glance around he looked only at MacDonald. He felt calm enough.

“What’s going on here, Mr. MacDonald?” he said.

“This has nothing to do with you, Deputy,” MacDonald said coldly. “We have constituted ourselves a regulation committee and we know our objectives. It is none of your business. Stand aside.”

“It is my business. You are not coming in here with these people.”

“You caught this posting people out from the marshal, Bud?” Chet Haggin asked.

Gannon saw Cade casually draw his Colt and rest it on his thigh. He kept the shotgun trained on MacDonald. “Take them out, Mr. MacDonald.”

“You fool!” MacDonald said. His mouth looked like a trap in his ascetic, coldly handsome face. “We intend to round up some agitators who are bent on making trouble at the Medusa. You won’t stop us. You—”

“Take them out,” he said again. His ribs ached where the butt of the shotgun was clamped against his side, his hand sweated on the barrel. “Out,” he said.

“We’ll come through shooting if we have to, Bud,” Wash said.

Gannon heard the iron snap as Cade cocked his Colt; he tried not to flinch, not to look. He stared straight at MacDonald over the muzzle of the shotgun, and MacDonald licked his lips.

“Morgan already killed Frank for you, Mister Mac!” a miner yelled, and MacDonald scowled.

“Take your people out of town, Mr. MacDonald,” Gannon said once more. “There will be no rounding up done in Warlock.”