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 "It's McPacken's business, and McPacken is out here to take care of it. If you want to help, we don't mind. Go on down to that gate, and stand behind the post. If any of them get by us, you can have what's left."

Tom saw that their gay determination was inflexible. There was nothing to do but go to the gate, and he went. Instead of getting behind the thick post upon which the heavy gate was swung, he climbed up and sat on top of it, his rifle across his thighs. He was the most prominent object in the landscape, yet quite undisturbed by any thought for his own peril.

Laylander was profoundly concerned, however, over what might happen when Withers and his crowd came charging down the road. They'd come at a gallop, determined to have it over quickly. Part of them would cut in behind the pile of ties at the first shot from that, quarter, and clean out those generous, but foolishly mistaken boys.

"They're comin' out!" Angus Valorous announced.

Windy Moore was feeling himself over, with the look of consternation in his face of a man who had lost his all.

"I left my catridges in my room—my gun's empty!" he said. He showed his bulldog to prove it, looking like a man undone.

"Is it a thirty-eight?" somebody inquired.

"I'll bust over to the hotel and git 'em," said Windy, with desperate eagerness, "I'll only be a minute."

"Is your gun a thirty-eight?" the young man who had spoken inquired again, with a sharp challenge, a