CHAPTER 3.
SOUNDING THE TIMBER When Steele left the hall, pushing Snell before him, making a lane through the crowd, it was not any longer possible to watch everybody.
Yet now he seemed to ignore the men behind him.

Any friend of Snell's among the vicious element might have pulled a gun.

I wondered if Steele knew how I watched those men at his back--how fatal it would have been for any of them to make a significant move.
No--I decided that Steele trusted to the effect his boldness had created.

It was this power to cow ordinary men that explained so many of his feats; just the same it was his keenness to read desperate men, his nerve to confront them, that made him great.
The crowd followed Steele and his captive down the middle of the main street and watched him secure a team and buckboard and drive off on the road to Sanderson.
Only then did that crowd appear to realize what had happened.

Then my long-looked-for opportunity arrived.