It was Richards, the
tough from "the Pocket," and, as he paid his fine promptly, they had to
let him go. Gordon went back, put on his everyday clothes and got his
billy and his whistle and prepared to see the maid from Lee when his
duty should let him. As a matter of fact, he saw her but once, and then
he was not made happy.
The people had come in rapidly--giants from the Crab Orchard,
mountaineers from through the Gap, and from Cracker's Neck and
Thunderstruck Knob; Valley people from Little Stone-Gap, from the
furnace site and Bum Hollow and Wildcat, and people from Lee, from
Turkey Cove, and from the Pocket--the much-dreaded Pocket--far down in
the river hills.
They came on foot and on horseback, and left their horses in the bushes
and crowded the streets and filled the saloon of one Jack Woods--who had
the cackling laugh of Satan and did not like the Guard, for good
reasons, and whose particular pleasure was to persuade some customer to
stir up a hornet's nest of trouble. From the saloon the crowd moved up
towards the big spring at the foot of Imboden Hill, where, under
beautiful trunk-mottled beeches, was built the speakers' platform.
Precisely at three o'clock the local orator much flurried, rose, ran his
hand through his long hair and looked in silence over the crowd.
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