The day passed slowly. It was a day throbbing with threat and tragedy on the eve of happening. Night fell, but there was no noticeable change in the situation. Legitimate places of business closed early; and singularly enough the usual crowds that streamed up and down the main street were absent, the dance halls and gambling hells deserted, the camp strangely, ominously peaceful.
For one thing, public sentiment against Lemuel Huntington had crystallized rather than abated. Sheriff Warburton’s drastic action together with his threat to call for the militia in the event he could not handle the disorder, stirred the Quintell forces to violent hatred. What inflamed them most was the fact that he had dispatched a number of his deputized cow-punchers to guard the Huntington ranch. That the offi
