She did so. The hotel-keeper stretched his arms.

"Now, pick up th' guns, please."

The two set about it.

"Where's that damn ol' reprobate?" inquired Billy, truculently, looking
about for Charley.

The patriarch had quietly slipped away.

"You kin drop them hands," advised the stranger, lowering the muzzles of
his weapons. The leader started to say something.

"You shut up!" said Billy, selecting his own weapons from the heap.

The stranger suddenly picked up one of the Colt's single-action
revolvers which lay on the floor, and, holding the trigger back against
the guard, exploded the six charges by hitting the hammer smartly with
the palm of his hand. In the thrusting motion of this discharge he
evidently had design, for the first six wine-glasses on Billy's bar were
shivered. It was wonderful work, rattling fire, quicker than a
self-cocker even. He selected another weapon. From a pile of tomato-cans
he took one and tossed it into the air. Before it had fallen he had
perforated it twice, and as it rolled along the floor he helped its
progression by four more bullets which left streams of tomato-juice
where they had hit. The room was full of smoke. The group watched,
fascinated.

Then the men against the wall grew rigid. Out of the film of smoke long,
vivid streams of fire flashed toward them, now right, now left, like the
alternating steam of a locomotive's pistons. _Smash, smash! Smash,
smash!_ hit the bullets with regular thud. With the twelfth discharge
the din ceased. Midway in the space between the heads of each pair of
men against the wall was a round hole. No one was touched.

A silence fell. The smoke lightened and blew slowly through the open
door. The horses, long since deserted by their guardians in favour of
the excitement within, whinnied. The stranger dropped the smoking Colts,
and quietly reproduced his own short-barrelled arms from his
side-pockets, where he had thrust them. Billy broke the silence at last.

"That's _shootin'_!" he observed, with a sigh.

"Them fifty thousand is outside," clicked the stranger. "Do you want
them?"

There was no reply.

"I aims to pull out on one of these yere hosses of yours," said he.
"Billy he's all straight. He doesn't know nothin' about me."

He collected the six-shooters from the floor.

"I jest takes these with me for a spell," he continued. "You'll find
them, if you look hard enough, along on th' trail--also yore broncs."

He backed toward the