"Well, what if it is a trick?" broke in another. "It ain't going to work. The crowd'll be back here again inside of ten minutes an' all the sheriffs an' constables in the State can't stop us from taking him out an' stringin' him up." "We might as well go and see what's up," said another. "I guess he's where he'll keep. He'll be here when we come back, Bill. He can't get out till we open the door, so what's the use cussin' about ten or fifteen minutes' delay? Come on! I don't take any stock in this talk about Indians, but, great snakes, if they want to get up a company to go out and--" The rest of the remark was lost to Martin when the group turned the corner of the jail. "Ten or fifteen minutes," he groaned. In ten or fifteen minutes the whole town would be out there, breaking down the door--the work of a few seconds. He remembered hearing people laugh and joke about the new jail. No less a person than Cap' Redberry had said, after a casual inspection of the calaboose, that if THAT was what they called a jail he'd hate to be inside of it if a woodpecker started to peckin' at it, 'cause if such a thing happened the whole blamed she-bang would cave in and like as not hurt him considerable. And Cap' was not the only one who spoke derisively of the new jail. Ed Bloker declared he had quit walkin' past it on his way home from the grocery because he was in mortal terror of staggerin' up against it and knockin' it all to smash. Of course, Martin knew that it was not as bad as all that, but, even so, it could not hold out for more than a minute if some one began pounding at the door with a sledge-hammer. There were two rooms, or compartments, to the jail; a little ante-room and the twelve-by-sixteen foot "cage," of which he was the sole occupant. A single cornhusk mattress had been put in for him that afternoon. He never seemed quite able to fix its position in his mind, a circumstance that caused him to stumble over it time and again as he tramped restlessly about the place in the darkness.