"I couldn't see. Look out, sir! You can't get through that door more than two at a time!" The door still stood open, at the end of the corridor. Claude went down the steps until he could sight along the floor of the passage, into the front room. The shutters were closed in there, and the sunlight came through the slats. In the middle of the floor, between the door and the windows, stood a tall chest of drawers, with a mirror attached to the top. In the narrow space between the bottom of this piece of furniture and the floor, he could see a pair of boots. It was possible there was but one man in the room, shooting from behind his movable fort,--though there might be others hidden in the corners. "There's only one fellow in there, I guess. He's shooting from behind a big dresser in the middle of the room. Come on, one of you, we'll have to go in and get him." Willy Katz, the Austrian boy from the Omaha packing house, stepped up and stood beside him. "Now, Willy, we'll both go in at once; you jump to the right, and I to the left,--and one of us will jab him. He can't shoot both ways at once. Are you ready? All right--Now!" Claude thought he was taking the more dangerous position himself, but the German probably reasoned that the important man would be on the right. As the two Americans dashed through the door, he fired. Claude caught him in the back with his bayonet, under the shoulder blade, but Willy Katz had got the bullet in his brain, through one of his blue eyes. He fell, and never stirred. The German officer fired his revolver again as he went down, shouting in English, English with no foreign accent, "You swine, go back to Chicago!" Then he began choking with blood. Sergeant Hicks ran in and shot the dying man through the temples. Nobody stopped him. The officer was a tall man, covered with medals and orders; must have been very handsome. His linen and his hands were as white as if he were going to a ball. On the dresser were the files and paste and buffers with which he had kept his nails so pink and smooth. A ring with a ruby, beautifully cut, was on his little finger. Bert Fuller screwed it off and offered it to Claude. He shook his head. That English sentence had unnerved him. Bert held the ring out to Hicks, but the Sergeant threw down his revolver and broke out: "Think I'd touch anything of his? That beautiful little girl, and my buddy--He's worse than dead, Dell is, worse!" He turned his back on his comrades so that they wouldn't see him cry. "Can I keep it myself, sir?" Bert asked.