He snatched up his rifle and whirled toward
Ben and Mundy and the men between them.
They had not moved, had taken no single step forward. He remembered
having seen a man near Mundy standing with open mouth and bulging
eyes; the fellow's jaw still sagged, his eyes were fixed in the same
strange stare, his eyelids had not so much as winked.
"That's one!" yelled Conniston. He laughed out loud, the laugh of a
man whose nerves are strained almost to the point of snapping.
"Come on, come on! Who'll be next?"
They muttered among themselves; here and there a man called out
sharply. But still they did not move. A thing like that which they had
just witnessed drives the fumes of alcohol from a man's brain like a
dip in ice-water. They could beat him down, they could take him, they
could kill him as he had killed the Chinaman. But he could kill more
than one of them before they could drop him. These things were clear.
And the men hesitated.
"Afraid?" he laughed, taunting, jeering them, all discretion swept
away from him. "Why don't you send some more men? There might be a
little whisky left--if you hurry!"
He saw Ben and Mundy stir uneasily, saw them glance at each other, at
the barrel with its shattered staves and gushing liquor, at the men
whom they were self-elected to lead, and back to him. He saw the Lark
and the man Peters standing close together, talking earnestly, seeming
to argue with growing heat.
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