the
rail to close. De Spain, struggling to free himself from the dying
man, saw, through a mist, the greenish eyes and the thirsty knife. He
fired from the floor. The bullet shook without stopping his enemy, and
de Spain, partly caught under Sandusky's body, thought, as Sassoon
came on, the game was up. With an effort born of desperation, he
dragged himself from under the twitching giant, freed his revolver,
rolled away, and, with his sight swimming, swung the gun at Sassoon's
stomach. He meant to kill him. The bullet whirled the white-faced man
to one side and he dropped, but pulled himself, full of fight, to his
knees and, knife in hand, panted forward. De Spain rolling hastily
from him, staggered to his feet and, running in as Sassoon tried to
strike, beat him senseless with the butt of his gun.

His own eyes were streaming blood. His head was reeling and he was
breathless, but he remembered those of the gang waiting outside. He
still could see dimly the window at the end of the bar. Dashing his
fingers through the red stream on his forehead, he ran for the window,
smashed through the sash into the patio and found Sassoon's horse
trembling at the fusillade. Catching the lines and the pommel, he
stuck his foot up again and again for the stirrup. It was useless; he
could not make it. Then, summoning all of his fast-ebbing strength, he
threw himself like a sack across the horse's back, lashed the brute
through the open gateway, climbed into the saddle, and spurred blindly
away.

CHAPTER XI

AFTER THE STORM

It was well along toward midnight of the same day when two horsemen,
after having ridden circumspectly around the outbuildings and corrals,
dismounted from their horses at some little distance from the door of
the Calabasas Inn. They shook out their legs as men do after a long
turn in the saddle and faced each other in a whispered colloquy. An
overcast sky, darkening the night, concealed the alkali crusting the
riders and their horses; but the hard breathing of the latter in the
darkness told of a pace forced for some hours.

"Find your feet before you go in, Pardaloe," suggested the heavier of
the two men guardedly to the taller one.

"Does this man know you?" muttered the man addressed as Pardaloe,
stamping in the soft dust and shifting slightly a gun harness on his
breast.

"Pedro knows me," returned Lefever, the other man, "but McAlpin says
there is a new man here, a half-wit. They all belong to