ver the horn
of the saddle, and went silently to the back of Struve's hotel.
Certain that no one had seen him, he half-circled the building, came to
the window which he had counted upon finding open, slipped in, and
passed down the hall to Struve's room. At his light tap Struve called,
"Come in," and turned toward him as the door opened. Norton closed it
behind him.

"I am taking a chance that Vidal Nunez is at Galloway's right now," he
told the hotel keeper. "I am going to get him if he is. I want you to
watch the back end of the Casa Blanca and see that he doesn't slip out
that way. A shotgun is what you want. Blow the head off any man who
doesn't stop when you tell him to. Is Tom Cutter in his room yet?"

While Struve, wasting neither time nor words, went to see, Norton
unbuttoned his shirt, removed the thirty-eight-caliber revolver from
the holster slung under his left arm, whirled the cylinder, and kept
the gun in his left hand. In a moment Struve had returned, the deputy
at his heels.

"What's this about Vidal being here?" Cutter asked sharply.

Norton explained briefly and as briefly gave Tom Cutter his orders.
While Struve mounted guard at the rear, Cutter was to look out for the
front of the building.

"Going in alone, are you, Rod?" Cutter shook his head. "If Vidal is
in there, and Galloway and the Kid and Antone are all on the job, the
chances are there's going to be something happen. Better let me come
in along with you."

But Norton, his mouth grown set and grim and chary of words, shook his
head. Followed by Struve and Cutter he was outside in the darkness
five minutes after he had entered the hotel.

Struve, a shotgun in his hands, took his place twenty steps from the
back door of the Casa Blanca, his restless eyes sweeping back and forth
continually, taking stock of door and window; a lamp burning in a rear
room cast its light out through a window whose shade was less than half
drawn. Tom Cutter, accustomed to acting swiftly upon his superior's
suggestions, listened wordlessly to the few whispered instructions,
nodded, and did as he was told, effacing himself in the shadows at the
corner of the building, prepared when the time came to spring out into
the street whence he could command the front and one side of the Casa
Blanca. Norton, before leaving Cutter, had drawn the heavy gun from
the holster swinging at his belt.

"It's some time since we've had any two-handed shooting to do