with
a puppy while the roan was being fed.

Jake Sharp, owner of the corral, stood in the doorway and chatted with
the sheriff for a minute. Was it true that a new schoolhouse was going
to be built on Bonito? And had the sheriff heard whether McCarty was
to be boss of Big Creek roundup?

Beaudry answered his questions and turned away. Royal clung to one
hand as they walked. The other held the muley gun.

It was no sound that warned the sheriff. The approach of his enemies
had been noiseless. But the sixth sense that comes to some fighting
men made him look up quickly. Five riders were moving down the street
toward the stable, Hal Rutherford in the lead. The alert glance of the
imperiled man swept the pasture back of the corral. The glint of the
sun heliographed danger from the rifle barrels of two men just topping
the brow of the hill. Two more were stealing up through a draw to the
right. A bullet whistled past the head of the officer.

The father spoke quietly to his little boy. "Run, son, to the stable."

The little chap began to sob. Bullets were already kicking up the dust
behind them. Roy clung in terror to the leg of his father.

Beaudry caught up the child and made a dash for the stable. He reached
it, just as Sharp and his horse-wrangler were disappearing into the
loft. There was no time to climb the ladder with Royal. John flung
open the top of the feed-bin, dropped the boy inside, and slammed down
the lid.

The story of the fight that followed is still an epic in the Southwest.
There was no question of fair play. The enemies of the sheriff
intended to murder him.

The men in his rear were already clambering over the corral fence. One
of them had a scarlet handkerchief around his neck. Beaudry fired from
his hip and the vivid kerchief lurched forward into the dust. Almost
at the same moment a sharp sting in the fleshy part of his leg told the
officer that he was wounded.

From front and rear the attackers surged into the stable. The sheriff
emptied the second barrel of buckshot into the huddle and retreated
into an empty horse-stall. The smoke of many guns filled the air so
that the heads thrust at him seemed oddly detached from bodies. A
red-hot flame burned its way through his chest. He knew he was
mortally wounded.

Hal Rutherford plunged at him, screaming an oath. "We've got him,
boys."

Beaudry stumbled back against the manger, the arms of his foe clinging
to him l