Almost
at the same time the crowd fell back the other way up the street,
there was the hurried tramping of feet and on came the Tollivers,
headed by giant Judd, all armed with Winchesters--for old Judd had
sent his guns in ahead--and as the crowd swept like water into any
channel of alley or doorway that was open to it, Hale saw the yard
emptied of everybody but the line of Falins against the wall and
the Tollivers in a body but ten yards in front of them. The people
on the roofs and in the trees had not moved at all, for they were
out of range. For a moment old Judd's eyes swept the windows and
port-holes of the Court House, the windows of the jailer's house,
the line of guards about the jail, and then they dropped to the
line of Falins and glared with contemptuous hate into the leaping
blue eyes of old Buck Falin, and for that moment there was
silence. In that silence and as silently as the silence itself
issued swiftly from the line of guards twelve youngsters with
Winchesters, repeating shot-guns, and in a minute six were facing
the Falins and six facing the Tollivers, each with his shot-gun at
his hip.
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