Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/49

 rope over the arm of the telegraph pole and a minute later a score of men were fighting for a hold upon the end as it fell into the crowd. Henry, one hand protectingly upon Hornblower's shoulder, lifted the other in an appeal for silence.

"Men!" His trained voice rang out high and sharp as it had upon parade grounds and marches.

The crowd ceased its mouthing for an instant and would have listened to him at least briefly but that Schuler, who was too impatient, struck off Henry's protecting hand from Hornblower's shoulder; at the same moment Gaylord flung the noose about the mountebank's neck.

At this interference Henry's face went white. His steel-gray eyes became two gleams of wrath and his left hand straightened with a snap that brought his clenched fist in violent contact with the point of Gaylord's jaw. The president of the First National dropped as if he had been shot, while Harrington snatched the noose from the neck of Hornblower and in impulsive defiance flung it over his own head.

"Now," he challenged hotly, "you fools! If you want to hang anybody hang me! There are fifty hands on that rope out there," he dared, "if you've got as much nerve as you think you have, swing me up!"

But the crowd did not want to hang Henry Harrington. The swaying bight of the rope slackened rather than tightened.

But the leaders on the lumber pile were not to be balked.

"Damn you, Harrington!" muttered the astounded Schuler, and was reaching to snatch off the noose when over the heads of all there rasped a new voice of