Page:Frank Packard - On the Iron at Big Cloud.djvu/163

 shrieks answered him, but it did not halt the Polacks. In a mob they rushed the door. Spirlaw sprang back, trying to close it after him; instead, a dozen hands grasped and half wrenched it from its hinges.

"Lie down on the floor, Spirlaw, quick!"—it was Keating's voice, punctuated with a cough. The next instant his gun barked, playing through the doorway like a gatling.

From the floor the road boss joined in. The mob wavered, pitched swaying this way and that, then broke and ran, struggling with each other to get out of the line of fire.

"Hurrah!" cried Keating. "I guess that will hold them."

Tain't begun," was Spirlaw's grim response. "Where's them cartridges?"

"On the table—got them?"

"Yes," said Spirlaw, after a minute's groping. "Here, put a box in your pocket."

"What are they up to now?" asked Keating as, in the silence that had fallen, they reloaded and listened.

"God knows," growled Spirlaw; "but I guess we'll find out quick enough."

As he spoke, from a little distance away, came the splintering crash of woodwork—then silence again.

"That's the storehouse," Spirlaw snarled. "They're after the bars an' anything else they can lay their hands on. Guess they weren't countin' on our havin' anything more than our fists to fight with, guess they weren't."

Keating's only reply was a cough.