His own eyes were streaming blood. His head was reeling and he was breathless, but he remembered those of the gang waiting outside. He still could see dimly the window at the end of the bar. Dashing his fingers through the red stream on his forehead, he ran for the window, smashed through the sash into the patio and found Sassoon's horse trembling at the fusillade. Catching the lines and the pommel, he stuck his foot up again and again for the stirrup. It was useless; he could not make it. Then, summoning all of his fast-ebbing strength, he threw himself like a sack across the horse's back, lashed the brute through the open gateway, climbed into the saddle, and spurred blindly away. CHAPTER XI AFTER THE STORM It was well along toward midnight of the same day when two horsemen, after having ridden circumspectly around the outbuildings and corrals, dismounted from their horses at some little distance from the door of the Calabasas Inn. They shook out their legs as men do after a long turn in the saddle and faced each other in a whispered colloquy. An overcast sky, darkening the night, concealed the alkali crusting the riders and their horses; but the hard breathing of the latter in the darkness told of a pace forced for some hours. "Find your feet before you go in, Pardaloe," suggested the heavier of the two men guardedly to the taller one. "Does this man know you?" muttered the man addressed as Pardaloe, stamping in the soft dust and shifting slightly a gun harness on his breast. "Pedro knows me," returned Lefever, the other man, "but McAlpin says there is a new man here, a half-wit. They all belong to the same gang--coiners, I believe, every one of them. They work here and push in Texas." "Can you spot the room when you get up-stairs, where we saw that streak of light a minute ago?" demanded Pardaloe, gazing at the black front of the building. "I can spot every foot of the place, up-stairs and down, in the dark," declared Lefever, peering through the inky night at the ruinous pile. Instead of meeting de Spain, as appointed, Lefever had come in from the Thief River stage with Scott three hours late only to learn of the fight at the Inn and de Spain's disappearance. Jeffries had already sent a party, of whom Pardaloe, a man of Farrell Kennedy's from Medicine Bend, had been picked up as one, down from Sleepy Cat, to look for the missing man, and for hours the search had gone forward. "Suppose you go back to the barn," suggested Pardaloe, "and wait there while I go in and have a little talk with the landlord." "Why, yes, Pardaloe. That's an idea," assented Lefever feebly. Then he laid the first two fingers of his fat right hand on the lapel of his companion's coat: "Where should you like your body sent?" he asked in feigned confidence. "Concerning these little details, it's just as well to know your wishes now."