His fusillade drew Mexicans to the doors of their huts and shabby jacals. The playing children scampered out of the street dust and out of sight. There were also cries of indignation, and of fear, together with some sharp commands laid on him to desist. But he only laughed with unnatural recklessness and gayety as he proceeded to empty his revolver and shatter the card. When the last cartridge was spent and the card hung but a thing of shreds, he got up from the stone, pulled the remnants of the card from the trunk of the mesquite, and ground them out of sight into the deep dust of the road. “The bullock carts will make a finish of it, if I haven’t,” he said, as he looked at the hole his heel had gouged. “And now maybe I can git away from them old memories. When I go back East I want to be another man—a new man altogether, and I don’t want to think even of the things that’s happened out here. I was in the wrong, of course; but not all in the wrong. And I don’t want any more gold—I mean any more hunting for gold, or nothing. I jest want to git away—away—away!” His voice rose. At the end of this outburst, as he turned about, he became aware of a commotion in and about the huts and jacals, and in the road which led to the town. Mexican women were shrieking and wailing, and the voices of Mexican men rose in curses in the local patois. Some of the men were issuing from the huts in a threatening manner. “Well, what’s up?” said Conover, staring. “My shots have been scaring these greasers, I reckon.” He laughed harshly, and turned toward the town, having thrust his revolver out of sight. Some of the men issuing from the huts now dashed up to him and sought to lay hands on him. He threw them off. “What’s up?” he demanded. One of them drew a knife and sprang at him. He laughed again, bitterly this time, and, catching the little Mexican by the arm, he twisted the knife out of his hand and threw it into the roadside chapparal. “Oh, no!” he said. “I don’t let any pig-eyed greaser stick his dirk into me. What you want?” “_Diable!_” the man grunted, picking himself up and making a dash for the tall, shabby American, naked-handed. Conover again threw him off, as easily as he would have hurled aside the attack of a child. He was aroused now, and his appearance had changed. Though his face was still puffy and his eyes watery, his tall form straightened into sinewy outlines; the trembling, too, had gone out of his hands and arms. “You devil!” he said to the fallen man. “Keep off, or——” He looked up the road toward the town, where a crowd had appeared, a crowd which increased in numbers, and was led by a man Conover knew to be the town marshal. With one eye on the howling Mexicans, who were trying now and then to get at him, Conover stared at the advancing crowd.