orse's hoofs struck in the dust of the road and the
masked rider swung about, startled in the moment of his supreme arrogant
confidence, it looked to those who saw as if there came Buck Thornton on
one big grey horse racing down upon another Buck Thornton on that big
grey's mate. With but a hundred yards between them....

"Pull the rag off your face, Broderick!" shouted Thornton savagely.

And oddly enough Ben Broderick, with a swift realization that a bandana
hiding his face now could no longer befriend him and might flap across
his eyes at a time when he should see straight and quick, yanked it
away. And with the same gesture, he jerked his lifted gun down and
started firing, straight at Thornton.

Of the five rifles trained upon those in the stage not a one was silent
now. Hap Smith jumped to his feet and fired as fast as he could work the
trigger; the man at his side leaped down into the road, crouched at the
wagon wheel and poured shot after shot into the brush whence he had seen
the muzzles of two guns. Before Ben Broderick's pistol had broken the
silence Buck Thornton had fired from the hip; and Two-Hand Billy
Comstock, his reins on his saddle horn, was freshening his right to his
title, firing with one gun after the other in regular, mechanical
fashion.

Hap Smith was the first man down; he toppled, steadied himself, fired
again and collapsed, sliding down against the dash board and thence to
the ground. His horses had plunged, leaped and in a tangle of straining
harness tugged this way and that a moment and then with the stage
jerking and toppling after them went down over a six-foot bank and into
the thicket of willows along the creek bed. With them went Blackie, his
face showing a moment, grey with fear....

Hap Smith, alive simply because the trampling horses had whirled the
other way, lifted himself a half dozen inches from the road bed,
struggled with his gun and fainted.... The guard saw a head exposed from
behind a tree and sent a 30-30 rifle ball crashing through it; on the
instant another bullet from another quarter compacted with his own body
and he went down, shot through the shoulder....

Thornton's eyes were for Ben Broderick alone. And, it would seem,
Broderick's for Thornton. But in their expressions there was nothing of
similarity; in Thornton's was a stern readiness to mete out punishment
while from Broderick's there looked forth a sudden furtiveness, a
feverish desire for escape.

Brod