he other arm fell
short of the nimbler and more watchful Dalton, but the duck that he
made to escape it broke the drop that he had held over Macdonald.

Macdonald's hand flashed up with his own gun. He drove a disabling
shot through Dalton's wrist as the ranch foreman was coming up to
fire, and kicked the gun that he dropped out of reach of his other
hand. The cowboy who had caught Macdonald's desperate blow had
staggered back against the foot of the bed and fallen. Now he had
regained himself, and was crouching behind the bed, trying to cover
himself, and from there as he shrank down he fired. The next flash he
sprawled forward with hands outstretched across the blanket, as if he
had fallen on his knees to pray.

Macdonald caught Dalton by the shirt collar as he went scrambling on
his knees after the revolver. Dalton was splashing blood from his
shattered wrist over the room, but he was senseless to pain and blind
to danger. He sprang at Macdonald, cursing and striking.

"Keep off, Dalton! I don't want to kill you, man!" Macdonald warned.

Careless of his life Dalton fought, and as they struggled Mark Thorn
undoubled himself from his hunched position on the floor and snatched
Dalton's revolver in his bound hands from the floor. His long legs
free of his binding ropes, Thorn sprang for the door. He reached it at
the moment that the man in the disguise of a homesteader pushed it
open.

Macdonald did not see what took place there, for it was over by the
time he had struck Dalton into a limp quiet heap at his feet by a blow
with his revolver across the eyes. But there had been a shot at the
door, and Macdonald had heard the man from the back come running
around the side of the house. There were more shots, but all done
before Macdonald could leap to the door.

There, through the smoke of many quick shots that drifted into the
open door, he saw the two cowboys fallen with outflung arms. In the
road a few rods distant Mark Thorn was mounting one of Chadron's
horses. The old outlaw flung himself flat along the horse's neck, and
presented little of his vital parts as a target. As he galloped away
Macdonald fired, but apparently did not hit. In a moment Thorn rode
down the river-bank and out of sight.

Macdonald stood a little while in the middle of the disordered room
after re-entering the house, a feeling of great silence about him, and
a numbness in his ears and over his senses. It was a sensation such as
he had exp