o it--he'll
come in alive as far as anything I have to do with it."

Carpy laughed cynically: "Jim," he exclaimed with an affectionate
string of abuse, "you're the biggest fool in all creation. It's all
right." The doctor opened the door of the little room as Laramie rose.
"Go 'long," he said roughly, "but bring back your legs on their own
power."

Laramie passed around from behind the prescription case where the clerk
was filling an order, and, busily thinking, walked rapidly toward the
open front door. A little girl waiting at the rear counter piped at
him. "How d' do, Mr. Laramie!" It was Mamie McAlpin. He stopped to
pinch her cheek. "I don't know you any more, Mamie. You're getting
such a big girl." Passing her, he stepped into the afternoon sunshine
that flooded the open doorway.

The threshold of the door was elevated, country-store fashion, six or
seven inches above the sidewalk. Laramie glanced up street and
down--as he habitually did--and started to step down to the walk. It
was only when he looked directly across to the opposite side of the
street, lying in the afternoon shadow, that he saw, standing in a
narrow open space between two one-story wooden store buildings, a man
covering him with a revolver.

At the very instant that Laramie saw him, the man fired. Laramie was
stepping down when the bullet struck him. Whirled by the blow, he
staggered against the drugstore window. Instinctively he reached for
his revolver. It hung at his left hip. But struggling to right
himself he found that his left arm refused to obey. When he tried to
get his hand to the grip of his revolver he could not, and the man,
seeing him helpless, darted from his hiding place out on the sidewalk
and throwing his gun into balance, fired again.

It was Van Horn. Before the second shot echoed along the street a
dozen men were out. Not one of them could see at that moment a chance
for Laramie's life; they only knew he was a man to die hard, and
dying--dangerous. In catching him at the moment he was stepping down,
Van Horn's bullet, meant for his heart, had smashed the collar bone
above it and Laramie's gun arm hung useless.

Realizing his desperate plight, he flung his smashed shoulder toward
his enemy. As the second bullet ripped through the loose collar of his
shirt, he swung his right arm with incredible dexterity behind him,
snatched his revolver from its holster, and started straight across the
street at Va