that room!"

Bard stepped back a pace till his shoulders touched the wall.

"Sirs," he said, "if you keep me here you will most certainly have to
harm me."

A figure ran around the edge of the crowd and stood beside him.

"Stand clear of me, Sally," he muttered, much moved. "Stand away. This
is a man's work."

"The work of a pack of coyotes!" she cried shrilly. "What d'ye mean?"

She turned on them fiercely.

"Are you goin' to murder a tenderfoot among you? One that ain't done no
real harm? I don't believe my eyes. You, there, Shorty Kilrain, I've
waited on you with my own hands. You've played the man with me. Are you
goin' to play the dog now? Jansen, you was tellin' me about a blue-eyed
girl in Sweden; have you forgot about her now? And Calamity Ben! My God,
ain't there a man among you to step over here and join the two of us?"

They were shaken, but the memory of Drew quelled them.

"They's no harm intended him, on my honour, Sally," said Lawlor. "All
he's got to do is give up his gun--and--and"--he finished weakly--"let
his hands be tied."

"Is that all?" said Sally scornfully.

"Don't follow me, Sally," said Bard. "Stay out of this. Boys, you may
have been paid high, but I don't think you've been paid high enough to
risk taking a chance with me. If you put me out with the first shot that
ends it, of course, but the chances are that I'll be alive when I hit
the floor, and if I am, I'll have my gun working--and I won't miss. One
or two of you are going to drop."

He surveyed them with a quick glance which seemed to linger on each
face.

"I don't know who'll go first. But now I'm going to walk straight for
that door, and I'm going out of it."

He moved slowly, deliberately toward the door, around the table. Still
they did not shoot.

"Bard!" commanded the voice which had spoken from nowhere before. "Stop
where you are. Are you fool enough to think that I'll let you go?"

"Are you William Drew?"

"I am, and you are----"

"The son of John Bard. Are you in this house?"

"I am; Bard, listen to me for thirty seconds----"

"Not for three. Sally, go out of this room and through that door."

There was a grim command in his voice. It started her moving against her
will. She paused and looked back with an imploring gesture.

"Go on," he repeated.

And she passed out of the door and stood there, a glimmering figure
against the night. Still there was not a shot fired, though all those
guns were train