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 feet, closed and barred the heavy batten door.

A bullet splintered the oak near him, bursting through the thick plank as he drew the bar into the upright forks fitted rudely to support it. Blood was rising to his mouth as he turned to snatch his pistol from the nail beside the door. He knew a lung had been Pierced; the thought of death was upon him.

The one small window in the cabin, its glass long since shot out by passing cowboys, had been boarded up with sawmill slabs spiked to the logs. It would need a crowbar to pry them loose. These slabs were bullet-pitted outside, indicating that they had been put there by the former occupants of the place after the shining mark of their window panes had been dimmed. The room was dark, save only for the light that leaked in about the crevices of the door, a gloomy place for a trapped, wounded man to defend the failing shred of his life as he might.

Barrett believed he had but a few minutes to live. His hurt was in the right breast, a little way below the collar bone. With every inspiration of breath he could feel the blood bubble out of the wound; where it escaped into the pleural cavity there was a burning as if a stream of living fire wasted from his veins. And, strangely enough, inconsistent with his peril as it might be, Barrett's dominating thought was that he must die unavenged, unable to drag even one of his murderers down with him into the dark.

Findlay and the other man evidently believed him already dead; near the door they were talking of him as one accounted for and done. Barrett knew they