broke into the Geronimo jail and the confinement had not thinned his sporting blood. He held the alcalde's strap behind him, doubled to give it weight, and at the very moment that Pecos came lunging in he laid it across his cheek with a resounding whack. The angry blood stood out along the scar and before Pecos could dodge back he received another welt that all but laid him low.
"Hit 'im again! Smash 'im! Fly at 'im, Pete!" yelled the crowd without, and at the appearance of a leader the beaten gang of hobos came out of their holes like bloodhounds. Pecos heard the scuffle of feet behind him and turned to meet them. The fury in his eye was terrible, but he was panting, and he staggered as he dodged a blow. For a single moment he appraised the fighting odds against him—then with an irresistible rush he battered his way past the alcalde and grabbed the back of his chair. In the sudden turmoil and confusion that humble throne of justice had been overlooked. It stood against the grating beyond which Boone Morgan and his deputies cheered on the kangaroos, and as Pecos whirled it in the air their shouting ceased.
There was a crash, a dull thump, and Pete Monat pitched forward with his throne hung round his neck. The strap which had left its cruel mark on Pecos fell to the floor before him, and Pecos, dropping the broken back of the chair, stooped and picked it up. The alcalde lay silent now beside the inert body of his sheriff and a great hush fell upon the prison as he stood over them, glaring like a lion at bay. He held up a bruised and gory fist and opened it tauntingly.
"Here's your dollar," he said, waving the bloody bill above his head, "come and git it, you sons of goats! You don't want it, hey? Well, git back into your cells, then—in with you, or I'll lash you to a frazzle!" They went, and as the interlocking doors clanged behind them Pecos turned to Boone Morgan and laughed. "That's what I think of your Kangaroo Court," he said, "and your own dam' rotten laws. Here's to the revolution!"
He flung his blood-red arms above his head and laughed again, bitterly; and after they had carried out the injured he paced up and down the corridor all night, cursing and raving against the law, while the battered inmates gazed out through their bars or nodded in troubled sleep. It was the revolution—no laws, no order, no government, no nothing! The base hirelings of the law had thrown him into jail—all right, he would put their jail on the bum.
CHAPTER XV
THE REVOLUTION IN FACT
Outside of the kangarooing of Rubes, the coming and going of prisoners, and such exceptional entertainment as that put up by Pecos Dalhart upon his initiation into the brotherhood, there were only two events a day in the Geronimo jail—breakfast and dinner. Breakfast, as with the French, was served late, and dinner at the hour of four. On account of the caterer being otherwise engaged in the early morning the café-au-lait in bed was dispensed with and déjeuner served promptly at nine. It was a hard-looking aggregation of citizens that crept out of their cells at the clanging of the interlocking gates and there was not a man among them who dared look Pecos in the eye as they slunk down the corridor to wash. Battered in body and cowed in spirit they glanced up at him deprecatingly as he stood with the strap in his hand, and there was no mercy written in the cattle-rustler's scowling visage. These were the men who would have put their heels in his face if he had gone down before their rush—they were cowards and ran in packs, like wolves. They were grafters, too; the slinking, servile slaves of jail alcaldes, yegg sheriffs, and Boone Morgan's swaggering deputies. More than that, they would mob him if he gave them half a chance. So he stood silent, watching them, man after man, and there was not one who could look him in the face.
It was Bill Todhunter who opened the gates that morning—the same keen-eyed, silent deputy who had fetched Pecos down from the mountains—and as his former prisoner, now transformed into the stern master of Geronimo jail, came near, he looked him over gravely.
"Feelin' any better?" he inquired.
"Nope," scowled Pecos, and there the matter dropped. After the affair of the night before he had expected to be put in irons, at least, or thrown into the dungeon, but nobody seemed to be worrying about him, and the prison routine went on as usual. The drunks in the jag-cell woke up and began to wrangle; the long-termers in the deck above scuffled sullenly around over the resounding boiler plate; and from the outer office they could hear the cheerful voices of old-timers and politicians discussing affairs of state. A long-term trusty came clattering down the iron stairs and passed out through the two barred doors to work up an appetite for breakfast by mowing the court-house lawn. As for Pecos, he was used to having his breakfast early and his Trojan exertions of the night before had left him gaunted, though he carried off his stoic part bravely. Nevertheless he showed a more than human interest in the steel front gate, and when at last, just as the clock tolled nine, it swung open, admitting the Chinese restaurateur who contracted for their meals, there was a general chorus of approval. Hung Wo was the name of this caterer to the incarcerated, and he looked it; but though his face was not designed for a laughing picture his shoulders were freighted with two enormous cans which more than made up for that. Without a word to any one he lowered the cans to the floor, jerked off the covers, and began to dish up on the prison plates. To every man he gave exactly the same—a big spoonful of beans, a potato, a hunk of meat, half a loaf of bread, and a piece of pie—served with the rapidity of an automaton.
Without waiting for orders the prisoners retreated noisily into their cells and waited, the more fastidious shoving sheets of newspaper through the small openings at the bottom of their doors to keep their plates off the floor. But here again there was trouble. The incessant hammering of pint coffee cups emphasized the starved impatience of the inmates; the food grew cold on the plates; only one thing lay in the way of the belated breakfast—Pecos refused to go into a cell. Before the fall of the kangaroo court it had been the privilege and prerogative of Mike Slattery to remain in the corridor and assist in the distribution of the food, but Mike was in the bridal chamber now with his jowls swathed in cotton, sucking a little nourishment through a tube. Pete Monat was there also, his head bandaged to the limit of the physician's art, and mourning the fate which had left him such a hard-looking mug on the eve of a jury trial. The verdict would be guilty, that was a cinch. But at least Pete was able to eat his breakfast, whereas there were about forty avid kangaroos in the tanks who were raising their combined voices in one agonizing appeal for food. It was a desperate situation, but Pecos, as usual, was obdurate.
"Let the Chink come in—I won't hurt 'im!" he said; but Bill Todhunter shook his head.
"The Chink won't come," he said.
"Whassa malla Mike?" inquired Hung Wo nervously. "He go Yuma?"
"No, Charley," returned Todhunter, "last night he have one hell of a big fight—this man break his jaw."
"Whassa malla Pete?"
"This man break his head with chair."
"Ooo!" breathed Hung Wo, peering through the bars, "me no go in."
"Well, now, you see what you git for your cussedness," observed the deputy coldly. "The Chink won't come in and the chances are you'll starve to death; that is, providin' them other fellers don't beat you to death first, for makin' 'em lose their breakfast. Feelin' pretty cagey, ain't they?"
They were, and Pecos realized that if he didn't square himself with Hung Wo right away and get him to feed the animals, he would have a bread riot on his hands later—and besides, he was hungry himself. So he spoke quickly and to the point.
"What's the matter, Charley?" he expostulated, "you 'fraid of me?"
"Me no likee!" said the Chinaman
