"Did you look through the barrel?" asked Nancy, slightly more
experienced with firearms than Billie. She seized the rifle and held it
up before a lamp that Alberdina had set in a corner of the gallery,
cocked it and looked through with one eye professionally squinted.

"Why, it is loaded," she announced. "It only has two empty what do you
call them--chambers?"

"Must I shoot at somebody?" asked Billie.

"You could try and I could try," answered Nancy, "but I don't think
either one of us would hit an elephant."

Just then Miss Campbell put out the light. At the same moment the axe
made a breach in the door and a man crawled through. Billie lifted the
rifle and, taking a long breath, aimed at his foot. The man was looking
about him in a bewildered way. It was the innkeeper, second leader of
the gang. Billie pulled and pulled, but nothing happened, and in another
moment a dozen mountaineers had crawled through the opening. The one
lamp cast a small circle of light near the fire-place. The rest of the
room was in darkness. In the gallery the anxious watchers were invisible
to the band of men, but the watchers themselves could see the outlaws
plainly now gathered in a group in the center of the room, rather uneasy
after breaking down the door of Sunrise Camp.

"Ladies, I'd advise you to give up the prisoners," called Lupo,
addressing the darkness. "We ain't goner touch none of you, but we wants
them two furriners right away."

"Git some torches," ordered the innkeeper, who seemed really to be the
boldest man in the lot.

Several men disappeared and in a moment returned with pitch torches
which cast a lurid, flickering light through the room. It was a weird
scene, looking down from the gallery. All of the men wore masks except
Lupo and the innkeeper, who were boldly undisguised. They peered about
the room. Suddenly Lupo's eye caught a corner of the staircase at the
far end.

"They're upstairs. Come on, men," he called.

Billie raised the shotgun to her shoulder.

"I'll shoot the old thing off this time if it flies to pieces," she
said, and pulled the trigger with all her might.

"Bang!" went the gun, and down she sat very hard, not knowing where she
had aimed. There was a great confusion of voices below and she thought
she heard someone cry out with pain.

"Could I have shot anyone?" she asked herself tremulously as she picked
herself up from the floor. Her shoulder ached and her finger was
bruised, but she