light clatter of sliding breech bolts followed the
crescendo, its defenders went on shooting, more raggedly now, as fast
as each man could work his repeater. A chorused bellow of defiance was
hurled outward as they fired.

Yet from out there came no response of musketry and, after all, the
deceitful effort to convert the period of parley into a paralyzing blow
had failed. Few flambeaux had been blazing in the space between the
stockade and the house itself, and the ponderous eight-foot wall of
logs built to make the place a fortress had become a protection for the
besiegers so that only a few scattered figures fell. Then, with amazing
unanimity of action, the torches were thrust down and quenched in the
snow.

But Bear Cat Stacy himself had remained flattened against the door, too
close to be seen from any window, and at his feet was a can of
kerosene.

The glow from a match-end became first a slender filament of flame
which widened to a greedy blanket as it lapped at the oil and spread
crackling up the woodwork of the door's frame. Then, gathering a swift
and mighty force, it laid a frenzied and roaring mantle of destruction
upon the integrity of the walls themselves.

From inside came a chorused howl of bitter wrath and despair, and as
Bear Cat turned and ran for it, crossing the space between door and
stockade, he went through a hail of lead--and went with the old charm
still holding him safe.

The Quarterhouse was strong enough to laugh at rifles, but to flame it
was tinder-like food. The roar and crackle of its glutting soon drowned
the howls of its imprisoned victims. Maddened with the thought that,
having refused parley, their lives were forfeit unless they could cut
their way out, they raved like dying maniacs. The glare reddened and
inflamed the skies and sent out a rain of soaring sparks that was seen
from many miles away.

The Virginia door was obliterated in a blanket of flame, but abruptly
the Kentucky door vomited a stream of desperate men, running and
shooting as they came. Then, for the first time, the cordon of rifles
that held them in its grip gave voice.

Between the house-door and the stockade, figures fell, grotesque in the
glare, and those that did not fall wheeled and rushed back within the
blazing walls. But in there was an unendurable furnace. They shouted
and raved, choking with the suffocation of foul smoke waves like the
demoralized shapes of madmen in some lurid inferno.

Then sta