began trotting on when he recognized
Morgan, shouting for him to hurry.

"Lend me your gun, Uncle John--I left mine in the hotel," Morgan said.

"Hell, what'll I do then?" said Uncle John, unwilling to give it up.

Morgan was insistent. He commandeered the weapon in the name of the law.
That being the case, Uncle John handed it up to him, with a word of
affection for it, and a little swearing over his bad luck.

It was a double-barreled buffalo rifle, a cap-and-ball gun of very old
pattern, belonging back in the days of Parkman and the California Trail,
and the two charges which it bore were all that Morgan could hope to
expend, for Uncle John carried neither pouch nor horn. But Morgan was
thankful for even that much, and rode on.

A little way ahead a man, hatless, wild-haired, came running out from
his dooryard, having witnessed Morgan's levying on Uncle John's gun and
read his reason for it. This citizen rushed into the road and offered a
large revolver, which Morgan leaned and snatched from his hand as he
galloped by. But it hadn't a cartridge in its chambers, and its caliber
was not of Morgan's ammunition. Still, he rode on with it in his hand,
hoping that it might serve its turn.

Morgan galloped on toward the square, where a great volume of smoke hid
the courthouse and all of the town that lay before the wind. He hoped to
meet somebody there with a gun worth while, although he had no
immediate plan for pitching into the fight and using it. That must be
fixed for him by circumstances when he confronted them.

Women and children stood in the dooryards watching the fire that was
cutting through the thin-walled buildings on that side of the
square--the hotel side--as if they were strawboard boxes. They were
silent in the great climax of fear; they stood as people stand,
straining and waiting, watching the approach of a tornado, no safety in
flight, no refuge at hand. There was but one man in sight, and he was
running like a jack rabbit across the staked ground behind Judge
Thayer's office, heading for the prairie. It was Earl Gray, the
druggist. He was covering sixteen feet at a jump. When he saw Morgan
galloping into the town, Gray stopped, darted off at an angle as if he
were going on some brave and legitimate excursion, and disappeared.

The Elkhorn hotel was well under way of destruction, its roof already
fallen, its thin walls bending inward, perforated in a score of places
by flames. The head of the st