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. In the expression of silent men
I found something which I had sought; from the hurried departure of
others homeward I gathered import; on the husky, whispering lips of yet
others I read words I needed to hear.

The other part of that crowd--to my surprise, the smaller part--was the
roaring, threatening, complaining one.

Thus I segregated Linrock that was lawless from Linrock that wanted law,
but for some reason not yet clear the latter did not dare to voice their
choice.