Page:Ritchie - Trails to Two Moons.djvu/227

 find waited in the dark. Just an unlocked door between Zang Whistler and the men who had braved all Two Moons to capture him.

In the dark cell house, meanwhile, the final dénouement of the town's day of climaxes was come to its moment.

The head of the mob streamed through the door leading from the stair landing into the great room filled with a shadow web of ranked steel. The narrow space between outer wall and the close-set fence of the cell block was theirs to possess, but a locked gate and beyond that a locked door to a cell separated them from their victim. For the first time this modern cell arrangement, which had been one of the cardinal points of pride in Two Moons' vaunting of a new courthouse, appeared a disadvantage.

"Where 's Agnew?" some one yelled. "Make Red give up his keys." A dozen hands fruitlessly strained at the bars of the gate; it did not yield so much as a rattle.

"Nobody can find Agnew," was the report called from the stairs where the remnant of the mob denied entrance into the narrow space before the cell house had to cool its impatience. The man with the lantern held it high against