door, de Spain smiled at his visitors:
"That isn't necessary, Morgan: I'm not ready to run." Morgan only
continued to stare at him. "I need hardly ask," added de Spain,
"whether you fellows have business with me?"

He looked to Sandusky for a reply; it was Logan who answered in shrill
falsetto: "No. We don't happen to have business that I know of. A
friend of ours may have a little, maybe!" Logan, lifting his
shoulders with his laugh, looked toward his companions for an answer
to his joke.

De Spain's smile appeared unruffled: "You'll help him transact it, I
suppose?"

Logan, looking again toward Sandusky, grinned: "He won't need any
help."

"Who is your friend?" demanded de Spain good-naturedly. Logan's glance
misled him; it did not refer to Sandusky. And even as he asked the
question de Spain heard through the half-open window at the end of the
bar the sound of hoofs. Hoping against hope for Lefever, the
interruption cheered him. It certainly did not seem that his situation
could be made worse.

"Well," answered Logan, talking again to his gallery of cronies,
"we've got two or three friends that want to see you. They're waiting
outside to see what you'll look like in about five minutes--ain't
they, Gale?"

Some one was moving within the rear room. De Spain felt hope in every
footfall he heard, and the mention this time of Morgan's name cleared
his plan of battle. Before Gale, with an oath, could blurt out his
answer, de Spain had resolved to fight where he stood, taking Logan
first and Morgan as he should jump in between the two. It was at the
best a hopeless venture against Sandusky's first shot, which de Spain
knew was almost sure to reach a vital spot. But desperate men cannot
be choosers.

"There's no time for seeing me like the present," declared de Spain,
ignoring Morgan and addressing his words to Logan. "Bring your friends
in. What are you complaining about, Morgan?" he asked, resenting the
stream of abuse that Gale hurled at him whenever he could get a word
in. "I had my turn at you with a rifle the other day. You've got your
turn now. And I call it a pretty soft one, too--don't you, Sandusky?"
he demanded suddenly of the big fellow.

Sandusky alone through the talk had kept an unbroken silence. He was
eating up de Spain with his eyes, and de Spain not only ached to hear
him speak but was resolved to make him. Sandusky had stood motionless
from the instant he entered the room. He knew all about th