“Tom Blair!” he said,—­and such was now the silence that a whisper would have been audible,—­“Tom Blair, have you anything you wish to say?”

The dark shape took no notice.  Apparently it did not hear.

Mick Kennedy hesitated.  Upon his lips a repetition of the question was forming—­but it got no farther.  In the midst of the mass of spectators there was a sudden tumult, a scattering from one spot as from a lighted bomb.

“Make way!” demanded an insistent voice.  “Let me through!” And for a moment, forgetting the other interest, the spectators turned to this newer one.

At first they could distinguish nothing perfectly; then amidst the confusion they made out the form of a long-armed, long-faced youth, his head lowered, his shoulder before him like a wedge, crowding his way to the fore.

“Make room there!” he repeated.  “Make room!” and again into the crowd, like a snow-plough into a drift, he penetrated until his momentum was exhausted, then paused for a fresh plunge.

But before him a pathway was forming.  Seemingly the thing was impossible, but the trick of a spoken name was sufficient.

“It’s Ben Blair!” someone had announced, and others had loudly taken up the cry.  “It’s Ben Blair!  Let him through!”

Along the pathway thus cleared the youth made his way and approached the centre of activity.  Previously the drama had moved swiftly,—­so swiftly that the spectators could merely watch developments, but under the interruption it halted.  The man at the pony’s bridle—­cowboy Buck it was—­paused, uncertain what to do, doubtful of the intent of the long-faced man who so suddenly had come beside him.  Not so Mick Kennedy.  Well he knew what was in store, and reaching over he gave the pony a resounding slap on the flank.

“Let him go, Buck!” he commanded of the cowboy.  “Hurry!”

But already he was too late.  With a grip like a trap, Ben’s hand was likewise on the rein, holding the little beast, despite his struggles, fairly in his tracks.  Ben’s head turned, met the bartender’s Cyclopean eye squarely, and held it with a look this bulldozer of men had never before received in all his checkered career.

“Mick Kennedy,” he said quietly, “another move like that, and in five minutes you’ll be hanging from the other side.”

For the fraction of a second there was a pause; but, short as it was, the Irishman felt the sweat start.  “The day of such as you has passed, Mick Kennedy.”

There was no time for more.  As bystanders gather around a street fight, the grim cowmen had closed in from all sides.  On the outskirts men mounted each other’s shoulders the better to see.  Of a sudden, from behind, Ben felt himself grasped by a multitude of hands.  Angry voices sounded in his ears.

“String him up too if he interferes!” suggested one.

“That’s the talk!” echoed a third.  “Swing him, too!”