n the far side showed faintly.

"Come out!" the voice ordered. "Or we'll cook you inside. We've no
time to lose. Rush it!"

The light disappeared from the crack and Harris pressed the trigger.
With the roar of his gun a shape pitched down across the door of the
shop. Some unseen hands caught the man by the feet and as he was
dragged back from sight Harris saw the red handkerchief which had
served as a mask.

From all along the row of buildings a fire was opened on the bunk
house. Apparently one man was detailed to search out a certain crevice
between the logs. Harris threw himself flat against the lower log
which barely shielded him. One rifleman covered a crack breast-high,
another the one next below, drilling it at six-inch intervals. Shreds
of 'dobe chinking littered the room. The balls which found an entrance
splintered through the bunks and buried themselves in the logs of the
far wall. A third marksman worked on the lower crack. Puffs of 'dobe
pulverized before Harris's eyes as the systematic fire crept toward him
down the crack in six-inch steps.

A flash of dust a few inches before his nose half blinded him. The
next shot drilled through an inch above his head, flattened sidewise on
the floor, and a fragment of shell-jacket, stripped in passing through,
scored his cheek and nicked his ear. The next fanned his shirt across
the shoulders and the biting scraps of 'dobe stung his back.

The shooting suddenly ceased. Billie Warren, dazedly indifferent as to
what should happen to the Three Bar since the wreck of the lower field,
had roused to action the instant she saw the spurts of chinking fly
from the cracks of the bunk house before the fusillade sent after
Harris. She threw open the door and stepped out, holding up one hand.

"Don't kill him!" she commanded. "If you fire another shot at him I'll
put up every dollar I own to hang every man that ever rode a foot with
Lang! Do you hear that, Lang?"

"Lang's in Idaho," a voice growled surlily from the shop. "None of us
ever rode with Lang. We're from every brand on the range--and we're
going to burn you squatters out."

"Draw off and let us ride away," she said. "You can have the Three
Bar."

"All but Harris," the voice called back. "He stays!"

She threw up the rifle she carried and touched it off at a crack near
the shop door. As the splinters flew from the edge of the log a figure
sprang past the door for the safety of the opposite