She suppressed an angry word: "I'm on my way to town," she exclaimed. "Let go my bridle!" She struck her horse. The beast jumped ahead. Van Horn, laughing, held on. But the shock jerked him almost from his feet. As he staggered forward, clinging to the rearing animal, the half-muffled report of a revolver was heard. Almost like a thunderbolt, it changed the situation. One of the Texas men had fired in the air, but no one had seen him fire and the other Texans jumped like longhorns. Stone, clapping his hand to his holster, whirled from the wagon wheel. Kate, frightened more than ever, struck her horse again; the bridle was jerked from Van Horn's hand and he turned sharply. Quickest to grasp what he saw as his eye swept the road, he yelled: "Look out, boys! There's Laramie!" The words were not out of his mouth when Kate caught sight of a man down the road leaping from a horse. As the rider touched the ground he slapped his pony's shoulder and the beast dropped flat. The man, rifle in hand, threw himself behind the prostrate animal and Kate heard his brusque yell to Van Horn and the Texans: "Pitch up!" It would have been hard to say who was most astonished. Laramie evidently was not expecting an encounter. To dash on horseback into any five men on foot, of the enemy's camp, was the last thing he would be likely to attempt. If he did attempt it, he would never choose Van Horn or Stone to be of the party. The ground about the scene was flat, or only slightly rolling, with the branch road and its old ruts running across it. Caught squarely in the open and without a sagebrush for cover, he had been forced to drop behind his horse for shelter. Lying flat and covering Van Horn and the men with his rifle, he awaited the unpleasant odds against him. The situation of the five men in front was even worse. Their rifles were stacked against the gate hardly a dozen feet away. But to run a gauntlet of a dozen feet against Laramie's rifle fire was a feat none had stomach for, nor were they ready at a hundred yards to pit revolvers against it. One of them might get him but they knew it would be after some of the others had practically ceased to be interested in the result. The minds of the Texas men were perfectly clear; their hands shot up like rockets. Stone had taken one big step toward the gate post--he changed his mind, halted and his hands went up at the very instant Laramie changed _his_ mind, and did not press the trigger against the burly outline darkening the field of his sights. Van Horn, caught, stood helpless and enraged--humiliated in circumstances he least relished for humiliation. Everybody's hands were up. His one chance, Van Horn realized, was to use his Colt's against the Winchester behind the prostrate horse--it was not a living chance and no one knew it better than he; his hands moved grudgingly up to his shoulders and he sang out savagely: "What the blazes do you want?"