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 and beyond Simpson, edging up a little nearer as the shooters mastered their first wildness and took more calculative aim. Tom believed he could hold them beyond dangerous range with the rifle. He threw four quick shots with no other intention, and they bunched in a surge for the door as eagerly as they had emerged a few seconds before.

But Kane, false friend in their necessity, had followed the example of everybody else along the street. The door was locked. They cut around the corner, making for the main entrance, which they must have reached before Kane could slam it, for all but three of them dropped out of the open conflict, although somebody began firing with a rifle from an upstairs window a few seconds later.

The three who remained in the street were of the cowboy type, one of them a long-haired man who looked familiar to Tom, although he could not recall at the moment where he had seen him. Somebody yelled to them out of the window where the shooting had come from; Tom saw an arm between the curtains waving a rifle, which the long-haired man ran under and caught as it dropped. He was the Indian member of Wade Harrison's outfit, who had escaped that morning of the fight on the old cattle trail.

Tom jerked a shot at him as he stooped and ran swiftly for the corner of the building. It was a clean miss, although it was a shot thrown with deadly intention. The Indian began to shoot from cover around the corner, only his arm and shoulder and the side of his head visible as he fired. He was considerably better with that gun than he was with a revolver; he was handing them out pretty