swift
and fatal a sequence of messages that, to those inside, it appeared
that they were being raked by a squad's volley.

The sharp challenge of the clean-mouthed rifle, multiplied by its echo,
dominated the muffled belching of revolvers like thunder crashing
through the smother of winds, and upon the drunken mob of murderers,
the effect was both immediate and appalling. To a savage lust for
violence succeeded panic and an uncontrollable instinct of flight.

A very different performance had been rehearsed in advance. It had
contemplated a pretense of melee in which Jerry Henderson was to be
killed--and no one else was to suffer. What had been staged as a
bar-room brawl with an incidental murder had been switched without
prior notice into battle and siege, and as every head came about with
eyes starting and jaws sagging, many dropped and lay prone on the floor
to escape the scathe of flying lead. Utilizing the respite of diverted
attention, Jerry Henderson overturned a heavy table, behind which he
crouched. He was bleeding now from half a dozen wounds--and his only
thought was to die fighting.

But that moment of terror-arrested inaction would not last, and before
it was spent, Bear Cat Stacy had hurled himself with hurricane fury
into the room, his rifle clubbed and flying, flail-like, about his
head. The brief advantage of surprise must be utilized for the rush
across the floor and, if it were to succeed, it must be accomplished
before the boldest recovered their poise.

He must reach Henderson's side and the two must fight their way out
shoulder to shoulder. Henderson must not die--just yet!

Turner Stacy covered half the distance by the sheer impetuosity of his
onslaught, and reached the painted line of the state border, before a
voice from the outskirts sought to rally the dismayed and disorganized
forces with a rafter-rocking howl: "Bear Cat Stacy! _Git_ him boys! Git
'em both!"

But the new arrival was not easy to "git." He seemed an indestructible
spirit of devastation; a second Samson wielding the jaw bone of an ass
and wreaking death among his adversaries. He hurled aside his rifle
shattered against broken heads and caught up a heavy chair. He cast
away the chair, carrying a man down with it as it flew, and fought with
his hands.

The superstition of his charmed life seemed to have something more of
verity, just then, than old wives' gossip.

Then the initial spell of panic broke and those who had ne