No need to complete that threat.  Back went the hand, back as though drawn by a spring, back as though it were a paralysed, useless thing.

“Now line up.”  At last the move had come, the move they had known was but a question of time.  “Toe the crack, every mother’s son of you.  Step lively.”

They obeyed.  As Wagner’s hand had done, they obeyed.  Six men of them there were:  surly crippled Manning, with eyes ablaze and jaws set like a trap; lank Wagner with his hands still in his pockets; Rank Judge, stumping on his wooden leg; greasy adipose Buck Walker, who ran the meat market; Slim Simpson, from the eating joint opposite, pale as the tucked-in apron around his waist; last of all the stranger, tall, smooth-shaven, alien in knickerbockers and blouse, his lips compressed, at his throat the arteries pounding visibly through his fair skin.  Up they came at the word of command, like children with ill-learned lessons to recite, like sheep with a collie at their heels.  Humorous at another time and another place, that compliance would have been; but with that mute, prostrate figure there before them on the floor, with that other menacing, dominating figure facing them, it was far from humorous.  It was ghastly in its confession of impotence, in its mute acquiescence to another’s will.

The shuffling of feet ceased and silence fell; yet for some reason Pete did not act.  Instead he stood waiting; his red-rimmed eyes travelling from man to man, the fissure between them deepening, the heavy lids narrowing, moment by moment.  A long half minute he waited, gloating on their misery, prolonging their suspense; then came the interruption.  A step sounded on the walk without, a step that was all but noiseless.  A hand tried the knob of the door, found it bolted, and tapped gently on the panel.

Not a soul within the room stirred, not even Long Pete; but the narrowing lids closed until they were mere slits, and the unshaven jaws tightened.

Again the knock sounded; louder, more insistent.

This time there was action.  One of the revolvers in Pete’s hand moved to the end of the line, halted.  “Up with your hands,” snarled a voice.

Two gnarled, distorted hands, the hands of Bob Manning, lifted in air.

“Up with you,” and another pair, and another and another followed, until there were not two but twelve.

“Make a move, damn you,”—­one of the revolvers had returned to its holster, the free hand was upon the bolt,—­“and I’ll drop you, every cursed one of you, in your tracks.  I’ll drop you if I swing the next second.”  With a jerk, the door opened wide, and like a flash the hand returned to the holster.  “Come in, you idiot,” he challenged into the darkness without, “come in and take your medicine with the rest.”

Within the room the six peered at the blackness of the open doorway, peered and held their breath.  For an instant they saw nothing; then of a sudden, fair in the opening, walking easily, noiselessly on moccasined feet, entered a brand new actor, advanced half across the room, while his eyes adjusted themselves to the light, halted curiously.  Back of him that instant the door again returned to its case with a crash, the rusty bolt grating in its socket; and above the noise, drowning it, sounded the snarl the others knew so well.