Page:Ritchie - Trails to Two Moons.djvu/221

 A solid galloping core, launched straight at the mass before the courthouse, came on irresistibly. Like standing grain under the lash of a great wind the mob bent and parted. Clangor of cries. Shots. Rataplan of hoofs. Then the whirlwind had passed.

Surprise had been absolute and stunning. Had the courthouse walls suddenly pitched upon the heads of the mob the effect could have been no less bewildering. Out of the dark a thunderbolt had come whizzing and passed into the dark again.

But in a moment Two Moons' folk gathered their senses. Boiling rage seethed through the crowd that reassembled. The sheriff's deputies forgot their sworn duty and broke their line of defense across the path to the jail; they mingled with the rest, rushed blindly down in the direction the attackers had disappeared, firing into the dark. Other men with rifles faced themselves in a line across the street whence the attack had come, prepared for a second avalanche.

"They 're after the Killer! The cattlemen have come to run off the Killer!" was the alarm that swept across the bobbing heads.

The boldness of the enemy fired still further