The same group of men sat on the curbstone and again fell silent as she passed. One of these, a small, wizened-face creature with watery blue eyes, shot a furtive glance her way and immethately dropped his head. A half block onward, James J. Lestrade stepped out of the grain store and nearly bowled her over. Instantly he was all affability. His hat came off and one pudgy hand fell lightly on her shoulder.
"Gracie, if you're going home let me escort you."
"Thank you," Gracie said shortly. "I've got something else in mind."
Lestrade sobered a little. "Expect you been to see Lin. Wouldn't do it if I was you, Gracie. Folks are known by the company they keep, you know."
She grew angry again. "I'll not hear a word against him. He's absolutely honest."
Lestrade shrugged his broad shoulders and pursed his lips. "Caught with the goods, Gracie. That's what he was. And it'll go plenty hard with the boy. Well, you tell the judge I'm coming out to see him tonight on a piece of business."
She nodded and passed on. The meeting left her in an extremely unhappy frame of mind. Lestrade's words and manner had earned a threat, both for herself and for Lin Ballou. And his eyes had held an expression she did not like. The man had grown too friendly, too paternal in the past week.
On the opposite side of the street she saw W. W Offut moving slowly along, seemingly plunged in thought And although Lin had asked her expressly to forebear appealing to anyone, she acted on impulse and crossed over.
"Mr. Offut," she said, speaking all in a rush, "you're a fair man and you've always been a friend of ours. Now, whatever happens, you've got to see that Lin gets justice. You've got to!"
Something like a smile—or the closest approach to it the girl had ever seen—came to the broad, enigmatic face. "Miss Gracie, I'm proud to have you call me fair. Depend on it, the boy will be treated right Be easy on that. Lin won't lack help."
The manner in which he said it and the way his steel-blue eyes rested on her face comforted her more than anything else could have. Thanking him in a slightly confused manner, she went to her horse and soon was galloping homeward. All the way across the valley she kept hearing Offut's slow, quiet reassurance. There was something powerful in the man.
Meanwhile, Lestrade had sauntered toward his office and busied himself with a sheaf of papers on the desk. Some time afterward the wizened-face ranch hand knocked at the open door and sidled in. He waited for Lestrade to raise his head and then spoke from the corner of his mouth, exactly as a long-term convict would have spoken.
"Boss, I got an idea. Who can tell what friends of this Ballou might slip him? That gal might have given him a hacksaw or a gun."
"Well?"
"There's a window on the second floor of the restaurant building that gives a mighty good view into the jail room. Get me a pair of glasses and I could crawl up there unbeknownst and keep a lookout. Could see if anybody give the kid anything. Wise idea, ain't it?"
"All right, Tracy. You ride to the ranch and get my pair of glasses there. And you'd better have two-three more of the boys drop into town, sort of casual-like."
Tracy hesitated, looked into the street and spoke again, in a still lower tone. "Beauty and Nig Chatto was a-wanting to ride down to town. Said I was to ask you."
Lestrade frowned and toyed with his pencil. He seemed to weigh several things in his mind. "All right, tell 'em to come if they want. But no liquor. And tell 'em I don't want either to even bat an eyelash my way. Trot now. You keep posted around the courthouse when you get back. If anything's attempted you pull the Double Jay boys together and make a fight for it. I don't want any of Ballou's friends to try getting him out. I'll scalp you and every last one of the crew if he does get free. Vamoose."
The man departed. Powder, bereft of the westering sun, appeared as a town sleeping or abandoned. Then the evening breeze came up and the lamp lights appeared here and there. A piano over in the pool hall began to jangle and from various angles men ambled toward Dick Sharp's Eating Palace to fill the aching void with steak and onions. Thither repaired James J. Lestrade, after which he got his horse from the livery stable and rode out on the Snake River Road, bound for Henry's. The jailer tramped mournfully across the street with Lin Ballou's supper and after a time tramped back again with the empty dishes. The pool hall began to fill, while sundry horsemen rode into town and quietly assembled in the shadows. Most of them seemed to be waiting for something to happen, and from time to time they sauntered by the county courthouse, singly or in pairs.
But nobody saw what was taking place within the Powder Bank. Archer Steele, the cashier, came through the back lots, unlocked the rear door and vanished in the dark vault. Twenty minutes later he slipped out with a bundle under his arm and made a long detour to gain the street at its western end. When he appeared in the restaurant, the bundle had disappeared.
A half-hour later, Steele finished his meal and rode swiftly toward East Flats Junction with a small satchel slung over the pommel. At the junction he unsaddled the horse and turned it loose on the desert Westward, the long beams of the Limited's headlight shot across the flat land and glistened on the rails. Steele collected a handful of old newspapers from the station shed, spread them between the tracks and made a bonfire to flag the train. The engine roared by and came to a clanking stop. Steele swung up into the vestibule of a sleeper, turned to give a brief farewell glance at the country he had spent the best part of his youth in, and followed the porter inside, the back satchel securely held under his arm.
The action of the cashier had been shrouded in secrecy, but the results burst like a bomb on the sleepy town of Powder next morning, and within four short hours reached the farthest homestead in the valley.
Lin Ballou had finished his breakfast and was chinning himself for exercise on the inner coping of the door when he noticed a man running down the street, shouting at the top of his voice. Lin dropped quickly to the floor and craned his neck to follow this individual on his course. But the corridor intervened between the room and the outer wall of the courthouse, and the window which opened through this wall to allow a view of the street was somewhat higher than the usual window. Therefore, Lin soon lost the man and had to compose himself for further developments.
These were not long in coming.
In three or four minutes the man came back at the same headlong pace, followed by several others, foremost of whom was Lestrade and Dick Sharp of the restaurant. Presently W. W. Offut came into view, walking quite slowly and with his usual dignified air. By now the whole town was turning out. Lin heard the jailers chair slam against a wall on the lower floor, and shortly, from his limited point of view, he saw that worthy loping after the rest of the crowd.
The center of excitement seemed to be near the bank or Dan Rounds' office. Lin built himself a cigarette, and for want of something better to do, he began to reflect on the excitability of the human family. Here's everybody rushing along as if they were going to a murder, he thought, and I'm burning up because I can't join 'em. If ever there was a time to get out of this bastile, now is it.
He crossed over to the rear window and put his weight against the bars. But he had done this before and decided that it required more strength than he possessed to move them. The courthouse was fairly new and of good design. The former jail had been a thing scandalously easy to depart from, and the authorities, profiting by experience, had contrived to imbed the bars of the new jail room in a cement casement.
The door of the room was itself not a formidable barrier, being like any other door except for the upper half, which had an iron grating; but though the prisoner might possibly pick the lock and get through it, he faced the same kind of cemented and barred windows along the corridor. His only other chance lay in going to the end of the corridor, opening the door and slipping downstairs to the courtroom. Unfortunately, the jailer slept on a cot at the foot of this stairway and during the day sat in a chair from which he commanded a good view in all directions.
Prospects not so good, Lin