Finally, seeming to realize what desperate men he was dealing with, Heywood shouted, “Murder! Murder!” Whereupon one of the robbers struck him a terrible blow on the head with a revolver, felling him to the floor. Pitts then drew a knife from his pocket, and opening it, said, “Let’s cut his —— throat,” and made a feint of doing so, inflicting a slight wound on Heywood’s neck as he lay helpless upon the floor. The two men then dragged him from where he lay, at the rear of his desk, back to the door of the vault, still demanding that he open the safe. Occasionally also they turned from him to Bunker and Wilcox, pointing their revolvers at them and calling on them to “Unlock that safe.” To this demand the young men answered that they could not unlock the safe. The statement was true, though in a sense quite different from that in which the robbers understood it. The reason that they could not unlock it was that it was unlocked already. The door was closed and the bolts were shot into place, but the combination dial was not turned. This was one of the humors of the situation, but one which those in the secret were not in a position to enjoy. As a last resort for coercing Heywood, who was still lying on the floor, in but a partially conscious condition, Pitts placed his revolver close to Heywood’s head and fired. The bullet passed into the vault and through a tin box containing jewelry and papers left by some customer for safe keeping. This was the first shot fired in the bank, and its futility well foretokened the failure of the whole effort. [A. BUNKER.] A. BUNKER. While Bunker and Wilcox received occasional attention from Heywood’s assailants, their special custodian was Bob Younger. As Bunker had his pen in his hand when first ordered to hold up his hands, it remained for a time poised in the air. When he made an effort to lay it down, Younger, noticing the movement, and thinking it an attempt to reach a weapon, sprang at Bunker, and thrusting his revolver into his face, said, “Hear, put up your hands and keep ’em up, or I’ll kill you!” Then, to hold his prisoners more completely under his control, he compelled them both to get down on their knees under the counter. All the robbers were very much excited, and increasingly so as they found themselves baffled and resisted. Younger would point his pistol first at one of the young men and then at the other, turning from time to time to search among the papers on the desk, or to open a drawer in quest of valuables.