The jail was dark and silent. About it shadows mingled, scattered, and gathered again. There was a whispered colloquy. Then a score of shadows detached themselves from the gloom. They ranged themselves in a line opposite the jail door. Other shadows crept from either side and took stations along the wall, ready to rush in when the door was broken down. A low whistle sounded. The men facing the door came forward at a walk, at a trot, at a run. They carried a huge beam, which they used as a battering ram. As they neared the door the men by the jail wall crowded close. At the last step the beam bearers increased their pace and heaved forward together. Unlocked, unbolted, not even latched, the door flung wide at the first touch, and whirled crashing back against the wall; the crew of the battering ram, braced for a shock, fell sprawling across the threshold. Reserves from the sides sprang over them, too eager to note the ominous ease of that door forcing, and plunged into the silent darkness of the jail. They stiffened in their tracks. For a shaft of light swept across the dark, a trembling cone of radiance, a dancing light on the clump of masked men who shrank aside from that shining circle, on a doorway where maskers crowded in. A melancholy voice floated through the darkness. "Come in," said Gwinne. "Come in--if you don't mind the smoke." The lynchers crowded back, they huddled against the walls in the darkness beyond that cone of dazzling light. "Are you all there?" said Gwinne. His voice was bored and listless. "Shaw, Ellis, Clark, Clancy, Tucker, Woodard, Bruno, Toad Hales--" "I want Sim!" announced Charlie See's voice joyously. "Sim is mine. Somebody show me which is Sim! Is that him pushin' back toward the door?" A clicking sound came with the words, answered by similar clickings here and there in the darkness. "Tom Ross has got Sim covered," said the unhurried voice of Spinal Maginnis. "You and Hiram Yoast be sure to get that big fellow in front. I got my man picked." A chuckle came from across the way. "You, Vet Blackman! Remember what I told you? This is me--Buck Hamilton. You're my meat!" "Oh, keep still and let me call the roll," complained Gwinne's voice--which seemed to have shifted its position. "Kroner, Jody Weir, Eastman, Wiley, Hover, Lithpin Tham--" The beam of light shifted till it lit on the floor halfway down the corridor; it fell on three boxes there. From the outer box a cord led up through the quivering light. This cord tightened now, and raised a door at the end of the box; another cord tilted the box steeply. "Look! Look! Look!" shrieked someone by the door. Two rattlesnakes slid squirming from the box into that glowing circle--they writhed, coiled, swayed. _Z-z-z--B-z-z-zt!_ The light went out with a snap. "Will you fire first, gentlemen of the blackguards?" said Gwinne.