Several Falins were
there--led by young Buck, whom Hale recognized as the red-headed
youth at the head of the tearing horsemen who had swept by him
that late afternoon when he was coming back from his first trip to
Lonesome Cove. The old man gritted his teeth as he looked and he
put one of his huge pistols on a table within easy reach and kept
the other clenched in his right fist. From down the street came
five horsemen, led by John Hale. Every man carried a double-
barrelled shotgun, and the old man smiled and his respect for Hale
rose higher, high as it already was, for nobody--mountaineer or
not--has love for a hostile shotgun. The Falins, armed only with
pistols, drew near.
"Keep back!" he heard Hale say calmly, and they stopped--young
Buck alone going on.
"We want that feller," said young Buck.
"Well, you don't get him," said Hale quietly. "He's our prisoner.
Keep back!" he repeated, motioning with the barrel of his shotgun-
-and young Buck moved backward to his own men, The old man saw
Hale and another man--the sergeant--go inside the heavy gate of
the stockade. He saw a boy in a cap, with a pistol in one hand and
a strapped set of books in the other, come running up to the men
with the shotguns and he heard one of them say angrily:
"I told you not to come.
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