“Take the back window, girl,” he answered, briefly. “I’ll take the front. Stand to the side. Get used to the starlight and shoot every shadow you see, especially if it moves. Keep track of your shots, don’t waste an effort and don’t let anything creep up on you. They mustn’t get near enough to fire the house.” His voice was sharp and incisive. The drifting habit had fallen from him, and he was his own master again. Several heavy minutes dragged away without movement, without sound from without. The ticking of the clock pressed on strained ears like ghastly bell-tolling. Their eyes became accustomed to the darkness and, by the dim starlight, they were able to distinguish the outlines of the cattle-sheds, still, empty, black. Nothing moved out there. “I think they’re frightened off,” said Mary at last, breathing more freely. “They were probably just one, or they’d not have left. He knew he missed you, or he would not have fired again. Do you think it was Jesse?” “Jesse would not have missed,” he said, grimly. At that moment, a new sound broke the stillness, the whinny of a horse. Reinforcement had approached within the shadow of the cattle-sheds. Something moved out there at last. “Daddy!” called Mary, in a choked whisper. “Come here—they are down at the sheds.” Williston stepped to the back window quickly. “Change places,” he said, briefly. “Daddy!” “Yes?” “Keep up your nerve,” she breathed between great heart-pumps. “Surely! Do you the same, little comrade, and shoot to kill.” There was a savage note in his last words. For himself, it did not matter so much, but Mary—he pinned no false faith in any thought of possible chivalrous intent on the part of the raiders to exempt his daughter from the grim fate that awaited him. He had to deal with a desperate man; there would be no clemency in this desperate man’s retaliation. To his quickened hearing came the sound of stealthy creeping. Something moved directly in front of him, but some distance away. “Shoot every shadow you see, especially if it moves,” were the fighting orders, and his was the third shot of that night. “Hell! I’ve got it in the leg!” cried a rough voice full of intense anger and pain, and there were sounds of a precipitate retreat. Out under protection of the long row of low-built sheds, other orders were being tersely given and silently received. “Now, men, I’ll shoot the first man of you who blubbers when he’s hit. D’ye hear? There have been breaks enough in this affair already. I don’t intend for that petticoat man and his pulin’ petticoat kid in there to get any satisfaction out o’ this at all. Hear me?” There was no response. None was needed. Some shots found harmless lodgment in the outer walls of the shanty. They were the result of an unavailing attempt to pick the window whence Williston’s shot had come. Mary could not keep back a little womanish gasp of nervous dread.