ewheres about, too. I guessed
I wouldn't wander around none and run no chances of getting took up by
him. So I was getting ready to lay down on top of a level pile of boards
and go to sleep when I hearn a curious kind of noise a way off, like it
must be at the edge of town.

It sounded like quite a bunch of cattle might shuffling along a dusty
road. The night was so quiet you could hear things plain from a long
ways off. It growed a little louder and a little nearer. And then it
struck a plank bridge somewheres, and come acrost it with a clatter.
Then I knowed it wasn't cattle. Cows and steers don't make that
cantering kind of noise as a rule; they trot. It was hosses crossing
that bridge. And they was quite a lot of 'em.

As they struck the dirt road agin, I hearn a shot. And then another and
another. Then a dozen all to oncet, and away off through the night a
woman screamed.

I seen the man in the telephone place fling down his book and grab a
pistol from I don't know where. He stepped out into the street and fired
three shots into the air as fast as he could pull the trigger. And as he
done so they was a light flashed out in a building way down the railroad
track, and shots come answering from there. Men's voices began to yell
out; they was the noise of people running along plank sidewalks, and
windows opening in the dark. Then with a rush the galloping noise come
nearer, come closet; raced by the place where I was hiding, and nigh
a hundred men with guns swept right into the middle of that square and
pulled their hosses up.

CHAPTER XIII

I seen the feller from the telephone exchange run down the street a
little ways as the first rush hit the square, and fire his pistol twice.
Then he turned and made fur an alleyway, but as he turned they let him
have it. He throwed up his arms and made one long stagger, right acrost
the bar of light that streamed out of the windows, and he fell into the
shadder, out of sight, jest like a scorched moth drops dead into the
darkness from a torch.

Out of the middle of that bunch of riders come a big voice, yelling
numbers, instead of men's names. Then different crowds lit out in all
directions--some on foot, while others held their hosses--fur they
seemed to have a plan laid ahead.

And then things began to happen. They happened so quick and with such a
whirl it was all unreal to me--shots and shouts, and windows breaking as
they blazed away at the store fronts all