Had the big-hatted chief been wise in the ways of these men, he might peacefully have attained his object by opening his topcoat and showing his blue uniform, his brass buttons and his gold star; but naturally he did not think of that, and as he stood there before them, demanding of them, in a language they did not know, to surrender the guilty one, he was ulstered, like any civilian, from his throat to the tops of his rubber boots. In him the foreigners, bewildered by the sudden turn in events, saw only a menacing enemy coming, with no outward show of authority about him, to threaten them. They went right on at their task of barricading the windows with strips of planking tom from their bunks. They had food and they had fuel, and they had arms. They would stand a siege, and if they were attacked they would fight back. In all they did, in all their movements, in their steadfast stare, he read their intent plainly enough. Gabriel Henley was no coward, else he would not have been serving his second term as our chief of police; but likewise and furthermore he was no fool. He remembered just then that the town line ended at the bluff behind him. Technically, at least, the assault on Beaver Yancy had been committed outside his jurisdiction; constructively this job was not a job for the city, but for the county officials. He backed away, and as he retired sundry strong brown hands replaced the broken door and began making it fast with props and improvised bars. The chief left his two men behind to keep watch--an entirely unnecessary precaution, since none of the beleaguered two hundred, as it turned out, had the slightest intention of quitting his present shelter; and he hurried back uptown, pondering the situation as he went. On his way to the sheriff's office he stopped by Palassi's fruit store. As the only man in town who could deal with Sicilians in their own tongue, Tony might help out tremendously; but Tony wasn't in. Mrs. Palassi, née Callahan, regretted to inform him that Tony had departed for Memphis on the early train to see about certain delayed Christmas shipments of oranges and bananas. To the youth of our town oranges and bananas were almost as necessary as firecrackers in the proper celebration of the Christmas. And when he got to the courthouse the chief found the sheriff was not in town either. He had started at daylight for Hopkinsburg to deliver an insane woman at the state asylum there; one of his deputies had gone with him. There was a second deputy, to be sure; but he was an elderly man and a chronic rheumatic, who mainly handled the clerical affairs of the office--he never had tried to arrest anyone in his whole life, and he expressed doubt that the present opportunity was auspicious for an opening experiment in that direction.