and none on the other, pressed in and reached out to put an end to the castigation.
That was the point, in the height of the confusion, the heat of the crowd's partizanship, the face of the threat against the stranger, that Winch, the bow-legged man, came to the front. He pushed himself into the little space that Texas kept clear by his whirlwind operations, his coat open, his hands on his guns. His elbows stuck out at a sharp angle, suggestive of steel springs holding them ready to flash those guns before a man could half bat an eye. He leaned forward a little, a peculiar eagerness in his thin face, an electric brightness in his eyes.
"Stand back, gentlemen, and let the law take its course!" said Winch, speaking very mildly, but in a voice that carried far even above the growl of the disgraced man's friends who were running to his support.
The crowd pressed back, the color dropping out of men's faces, whispers running from lip to lip like the ripple of wind over water. Nobody questioned the bow-legged man's authority, nobody put hand to a gun to defend the issue. Texas released his grip on the man's throat, gave him a parting blow in the face with his open hand, broke the whip and threw the pieces after him as he staggered away.
