"It's this accursed Volsad Law," said Horgan. "All a result of the Boston tea runners. Tried to smuggle it in and then the reform crowd took it up. Blamed tea for crime and poverty. Pushed the laws through outlawing its sale." Orth grinned. "So now the bootleggers, or tealeggers, maybe, are getting rich." Horgan nodded. Inside the door the bartender met them and slipped a small bottle of cold tea into Horgan's pocket. Then he motioned toward the half-open door leading into the alley beyond. "Please," he said. "There may be jeep men watching my bar." They quitted the building and leaving the alley reached the main street. Ayna was waiting in the store's door and as she saw them she started to walk in their direction. A bony stoop-shouldered man with a naked skull beneath his droopy-brimmed hat lurched into her path. His sunken dark eyes were bloodshot and hot. He jerked her arm. "Looking for someone?" he demanded. "I'm here." Ayna's fist landed flush on the man's jaw. He staggered back, but still gripped her. Orth seized the man's shoulder and spun him about. With the same movement his other fist crashed the bony man backward for several paces. * * * * * But he had not been alone. With him were three other hard-faced men. They helped him to his feet and came pacing toward Orth and Horgan. Their hands were inching down toward their big holstered spring guns. Orth reached for his own hand machine gun, and with his movement their four enemies went for their own weapons. Horgan was slapping his bolts at the quartet. Ayna was hugging the dirty street. Orth felt one smashing impact before his weapon started sewing the explosive little pellets across the four men's middles. Pain was just starting to throb in his left elbow when the last of the others slumped, dead, into the dusty street. Horgan staggered toward him, a six gun bolt in his right side. "Just nicked me," he said calmly, his hand holding back the blood that seeped through his coarse-woven shirt. Orth found it hard to believe that these fallen men were actually but pseudo-men, robots. Their laboratory-given life blood was as red and sticky as a true man's, and their dying struggles were as realistic as his own might have been. The bartender came sidling up to Orth. He was but one of a score of muttering, staring onlookers. "Better clear outta town," he advised. "Krepp's brother is sheriff. And if he don't hang you Krepp's mob will do you up." "Thanks," Orth said. There were a dozen horses, saddled and bridled, drooping at a nearby hitchrail, and toward these he moved. "Come on," he told Horgan and Ayna. "We're riding out of here." Horgan shrugged. "Might as well get neckties for rustling a horse as for killing Krepp," he conceded, reloading his two spring guns.