"Go in and take him," offered Macdonald, stepping aside out of the door.

"Go ahead of us, and put 'em up higher!" Dalton made a little expressive flourish with his gun, evidently distrustful of the homesteader's quick hand, even at his present disadvantage.

The man at the back door was using the ax from Macdonald's wood pile, as the sound of splintering timber told. Between three fires, Macdonald felt his chance stretching to the breaking point, for he had no faith at all in Chance Dalton's word. They had come to get him, and it looked now as if they had won.

When Macdonald entered the house he saw Thorn sitting in the middle of the floor, where he had rolled and struggled in his efforts to see what was taking place outside.

"You've played h.e.l.l now, ain't you? lettin' 'em git the drop on you that way!" he said to Macdonald, angrily. "They'll swing--"

"Hand over that gun, Macdonald," Dalton demanded. They were standing near him, one on either hand, both leveling their guns at his head.

Macdonald could see the one at the back door of his little two-roomed bungalow through the hole that he had chopped.

"I don't hand my gun to any man; if you want it, come and take it,"

Macdonald said, feeling that the end was rushing upon him, and wondering what it would be. A bullet was better than a rope, which Chadron had publicly boasted he had laid up for him. There was a long chance if Dalton reached for that gun--a long and desperate chance.

The man at the back door was shouting something, his gun thrust through the hole. Dalton made a cross-reach with his left hand for Macdonald's revolver. On the other side the cowboy was watching his comrade's gun pointing through the kitchen door; Macdonald could see the whites of his eyes as he turned them.

"Don't shoot in here! we've got 'em," he called.

His shifted eye told Macdonald that he was trusting to Dalton, and Dalton at that moment was leaning forward with a strain, cautiously, his hand near Macdonald's holster.

Macdonald brought his lifted arms down, like a swimmer making a mighty stroke, with all the steam behind them that he could raise. His back-handed blow struck the cowboy in the face; Macdonald felt the flame of his shot as it spurted past his forehead. The other arm fell short of the nimbler and more watchful Dalton, but the duck that he made to escape it broke the drop that he had held over Macdonald.

Macdonald's hand flashed up with his own gun. He drove a disabling shot through Dalton's wrist as the ranch foreman was coming up to fire, and kicked the gun that he dropped out of reach of his other hand. The cowboy who had caught Macdonald's desperate blow had staggered back against the foot of the bed and fallen. Now he had regained himself, and was crouching behind the bed, trying to cover himself, and from there as he shrank down he fired. The next flash he sprawled forward with hands outstretched across the blanket, as if he had fallen on his knees to pray.

Macdonald caught Dalton by the shirt collar as he went scrambling on his knees after the revolver. Dalton was splashing blood from his shattered wrist over the room, but he was senseless to pain and blind to danger. He sprang at Macdonald, cursing and striking.

"Keep off, Dalton! I don't want to kill you, man!" Macdonald warned.

Careless of his life Dalton fought, and as they struggled Mark Thorn undoubled himself from his hunched position on the floor and s.n.a.t.c.hed Dalton's revolver in his bound hands from the floor. His long legs free of his binding ropes, Thorn sprang for the door. He reached it at the moment that the man in the disguise of a homesteader pushed it open.

Macdonald did not see what took place there, for it was over by the time he had struck Dalton into a limp quiet heap at his feet by a blow with his revolver across the eyes. But there had been a shot at the door, and Macdonald had heard the man from the back come running around the side of the house. There were more shots, but all done before Macdonald could leap to the door.

There, through the smoke of many quick shots that drifted into the open door, he saw the two cowboys fallen with outflung arms. In the road a few rods distant Mark Thorn was mounting one of Chadron's horses. The old outlaw flung himself flat along the horse's neck, and presented little of his vital parts as a target. As he galloped away Macdonald fired, but apparently did not hit. In a moment Thorn rode down the river-bank and out of sight.

Macdonald stood a little while in the middle of the disordered room after re-entering the house, a feeling of great silence about him, and a numbness in his ears and over his senses. It was a sensation such as he had experienced once after standing for hours under the spell of Niagara. Something seemed to have been silenced in the world.

He was troubled over the outcome of that treacherous a.s.sault. He felt that the shadow of the resultant tragedy was already stretching away from there like the penumbra of an eclipse which must soon engulf those homesteads on the river, and exact a terrible, blasting toll.

Dalton was huddled there, his life wasting through the wound in his wrist, blood on his face from the blow that had laid him still. The dead man across the bed remained as he had fallen, his arms stretched out in empty supplication. There was a pathos in the fellow's pose that touched Macdonald with a pity which he knew to be undeserved. He had not meant to take his life away in that hasty shot, but since it had happened so, he knew that it had been his own deliverance.

Macdonald stripped the garment back and looked at Dalton's hurt. There would be another one to take toll for in the cattlemen's list unless the drain of blood could be checked at once. Dalton moved, opening his eyes.

It seemed unlikely that Dalton ever would sling a gun with that member again, if he should be so lucky, indeed, as to come through with his life. The bone was shattered, the hand hung limp, like a broken wing.

Dalton sat up, yielding his arm to his enemy's ministrations, as silent and ungracious as a dog. In a little while Macdonald had done all that he could do, and with a hand under the hollow of Dalton's arm he lifted him to his feet.

"Can you ride?" he asked. Dalton did not reply. He looked at the figure on the bed, and stood turning his eyes around the room in the manner of one stunned, and completely confounded by the failure of a scheme counted infallible.

"You made a botch of this job, Dalton," Macdonald said. "The rest of your crowd's outside where Thorn dropped them--he s.n.a.t.c.hed your gun from the floor and killed both of them."

Dalton went weakly to the door, where he stood a moment, steadying himself with a hand on the jamb. Macdonald eased him from there to the gate, and brought the horses which the gang had hidden among the willows.

"Tell Chadron to send a wagon up here after these dead men," Macdonald said, leading a horse to the gate.

He helped the still silent Dalton into the saddle, where he sat weakly. The man seemed to be debating something to say to this unaccountably fortunate nester, who came untouched through all their attempts upon his life. But whatever it was that he cogitated he kept to himself, only turning his eyes back toward the house, where his two men lay on the ground. The face of one was turned upward. In the draining light of the spent day it looked as white as innocence.

As Dalton drew his eyes away from the fearful evidence of his plan's miscarriage, the sound of hard riding came from the direction of the settlement up the river. Macdonald listened a moment as the sound grew.

"That will be no friend of yours, Dalton. Get out of this!"

He cut Dalton's horse a sharp blow. The beast bounded away with a start that almost unseated its dizzy rider; the two free animals galloped after it. Chance Dalton was on his way to Chadron with his burden of disgrace and disastrous news. It seemed a question to Macdonald, as he watched him weaving in the saddle as the gloom closed around him and shut him from sight, whether he ever would reach the ranchhouse to recount his story, whatever version of the tragedy he had planned.

Tom La.s.siter drew up before Macdonald's gate while the dust of Dalton's going was still hanging there. The gaunt old homesteader with the cloud of sorrows in his eyes said that he had been on his way over to see what had become of Macdonald in his lone hunt for Mark Thorn.

He had heard the shooting, and the sound had hurried him forward.

Macdonald told him what had happened, and took him in to see the wreckage left after that sudden storm. Tom shook his head as he stood in the yard looking down at the two dead men.

"h.e.l.l's a-goin' to pop now!" he said.

"I think you've said the word, Tom," Macdonald admitted. "They'll come back on me hard for this."

"You'll never have to stand up to 'em alone another time, I'll give you a guarantee on that, Mac."

"I'm glad to hear it," Macdonald replied, but wearily, and with no warmth or faith in his words.

"And they let that old scorpeen loose to skulk and kill ag'in!"

"Yes, he got away."

"They sure did oncork a hornet's nest when they come here this time, though, they sure did!" Tom stood in the door, looking into the darkening room and at the figure sprawled across the bed. "He-ell's a-goin' to pop now!" he said again, in slow words scarcely above his breath.

He turned his head searchingly, as if he expected to see the cloud of it already lowering out of the night.

CHAPTER XI

THE SEnOR BOSS COMES RIDING

Nola Chadron had been a guest overnight at the post. She had come the afternoon before, bright as a bubble, and Frances had met her with a welcome as warm as if there never had been a shadow between them.

Women can do such things so much better than men. Balzac said they could murder under the cover of a kiss. Perhaps somebody else said it ahead of him; certainly a great many of us have thought it after.

There is not one out of the whole world of them but is capable of covering the fire of lies in her heart with the rose leaves of her smiles.

Nola had come into Frances' room to do her hair, and employ her busy tongue while she plied the brush. She was a pretty bit of a figure in her fancily-worked j.a.panese kimono and red Turkish slippers--harem slippers, she called them, and thought it deliciously wicked to wear them--as she sat shaking back her bright hair like a giver of sunbeams.

Frances, already dressed in her soft light apparel of the morning, stood at the window watching the activity of the avenue below, answering encouragingly now and then, laughing at the right time, to keep the stream of her little guest's words running on. Frances seemed all softness and warmth, all youth and freshness, as fair as a camellia in a sunny cas.e.m.e.nt, there at the window with the light around her. Above that inborn dignity which every line of her body expressed, there was a domestic tranquillity in her subdued beauty that moved even irresponsible Nola with an admiration that she could not put into words.