The four were in an excellent position. The corral commanded the rear and one side of the sheriff's shack, the rear of the Happy Heart Saloon, and one side of the barn in the rear of the Blue Pigeon Store. A man ran out of the barn. Laguerre's rifle cracked. The man stumbled, dropped, dragged himself to his hands and knees, and then huddled down slackly. Laguerre pumped in another cartridge. The staccato din at the other end of town was increasing. The heavy roars of several buffalo guns punctuated the steady crackling of the Winchesters' whip-like reports. Loudon smiled a slow smile and cuddled his rifle-butt against his shoulder. The world was coming his way at last. "That sheriff wouldn't 'a' built his corral so solid," observed Loudon, "if he'd looked ahead." "You bet he wouldn'," said Laguerre. "Dees log ees fine. No bullet come troo dem. Bimeby we geet Meestair Block, mebbeso." "He may be down in the Happy Heart. There ain't been a shot from the shack yet. He's in town all right though. His hoss and seven others are in the corral"--Loudon peered through a crack in the logs--"I can't see the brands. They're turned the wrong way." "Dere ees a lot o' pony een dat corral down dere," said Laguerre. "That's behind the Happy Heart Saloon. Lord help 'em if they try to slide out on 'em." _Zing-g-g_! A bullet ricochetted from a near-by boulder and hummed above Loudon's hat. "That came from the barn," said Loudon, firing at a gray smoke-cloud high up on the side of the structure. "They've knocked a hole in a board, I guess. Yep"--as the thinning smoke revealed a black opening--"they have." Shooting carefully and without haste, Loudon and Laguerre rendered firing from that hole in the barn a case of suicide. From their corner Johnny Ramsay and Chuck Morgan alternately drove questing bullets into the barn and the rear of the Happy Heart Saloon. The firing from the barn slackened. That from the Happy Heart redoubled in vigour. The glass window-sashes began to fall in tinkling rain on the ground. "The boys must 'a' gotten into the houses across the street," said Loudon. "They're a-firin' right through the saloon." "She weel be dark een two hour," Laguerre remarked, irrelevantly. "I know it. We'll have to finish up before then or they'll getaway. Plug any, Johnny?" "One," was the laconic reply of that expert with a rifle. "He didn't, neither!" denied Chuck Morgan. "I got him. Johnny was loadin' his rifle at the time the feller cashed. Johnny couldn't hit a flock o' barn doors flyin' low--not with his rifle." "Oh, couldn't I, huh?" yapped Johnny Ramsay. "Well, if I hadn't 'a' got him you'd be a-lyin' there right quiet an' peaceful with yore hat over yore face. I hit what I aim at. I ain't been shootin' holes in boards like some people."