unt as long as he could--and weakened. Colonel Wallifarro's
car stood before the place and, with a weary gesture, he turned to
Boone.

"My boy," he said shortly, "we've got to put a man in there. I don't
like to ask it--but you'll have to take that challenger's place."

Boone had seen enough that morning to make him extremely reluctant to
leave the Colonel's side, and he answered evasively, "I'm not a citizen
of this town, Colonel."

"You don't have to be to challenge." So Boone went in. The place was
foul with the stench of bad tobacco. The registration officers, who had
so far had their way, were openly truculent.

"Here comes a new Sunday-school guy," sneered a clerk with a debauched
face, looking up from the broad page of the enrolment book. "I wonder
how long _he'll_ last."

For a time it seemed that Boone was to enjoy immunity from the heckling
under which his predecessors had fallen, but the word had gone out that
a "bad guy" had come in for the Fusionists who needed handling, and his
apparent acceptance was nothing more than the quiet that goes before the
bursting of a thunder head.

His place was inside, so he could make no move when news drifted in that
one of the outside watchers had been assaulted and perhaps seriously
hurt, though he guessed that the car, in which he had been riding that
day, would again roll up, and that perhaps Colonel Wallifarro would once
more be the target of gutter insult. Indeed, he fancied he recognized
the toot of that particular horn a few minutes later, but as he strained
his ears to make something of the confusion outside the door burst open
and a group of a dozen or so ruffians forced their way into the cramped
space, brandishing sticks and pistols.

"Where's this here fly guy at?" demanded the truculent leader of the
invasion, and others used fouler expletives. Boone should perhaps have
felt complimented that such a handsome number should have been told off
to deal with his case, but as he rose to his feet he caught a glimpse
over their heads of Colonel Wallifarro standing in his car outside and
of confused disorder eddying about it.

Boone drew so quickly that there was no opportunity to halt him, and he
fired as unhesitantly as he had drawn. With a threat unfinished on his
lips the leader of the "flying squadron" crumpled to the floor, and with
swift transition from bravos to fugitives his tatterdemalion gang left
on the run.

Boone, with the pistol still in his h