e other members of their party had become
separated from them.

They had the enemy nicely cornered, with a cliff to cut off escape to
the rear, but they were themselves in the open; two men against four
and the four entrenched behind outcroppings of the living rock.

A small space of time was jammed with many large incidents immediately
after this discovery. Men attaining supreme exaltation died in the
instant of that attainment; pulses that leaped with the joy that comes
when sight lines with bead, bead with living target and the
trigger-finger begins to move, ceased their beating more abruptly than
a machine stops when the power is turned off.

The leaden slugs snarled as thick as angry wasps when the nest has
been disturbed; the crackling of the rifles was as a long roll; little
geysers of dust spouted among the rocks; the smoke of black powder
arose in a thin blue haze.

A bullet clipped away a little portion from John Slaughter's ear. He
called to Alvord:

"Bert; you're shooting too high; pull down; I see you raising dust
behind 'em every time."

Alvord, fighting his first battle, clenched his teeth and lowered his
front sight. John Slaughter had prefaced his advice by killing one of
the bandits; he supplemented it by putting a bullet through a head
that bobbed above the rocks. And when the other two members of the
posse came to take part in the fight, there was only one train-robber
living. They found him breathing his last where he had crept away
among the cliffs.

But killing desperadoes would not eradicate the reign of lawlessness
unless a man slew the entire pack; and John Slaughter had no intention
of instituting a St. Bartholomew's eve in Cochise County. Thus far he
had managed to get along with less bloodshed than many a man who had
not accomplished nearly as much as he. So now he went on with his task
as he had gone about his business always and proceeded to smoke out
the men who were responsible for this state of affairs.

It was not so hard to learn their identity as it was to get the proof
of what they were doing. That was slow work. But he had hired Bert
Alvord as his deputy with just this end in view. For Alvord was
hail-fellow-well-met in every bar-room of the county; owner of a
multitude of friends, many of whom were shady characters. In later
years he gained his own dark fame as an outlaw, but that was long
after John Slaughter left the office of sheriff.

At present Alvord was working