The big man followed obediently. "Part of that is good," observed Shaky Akins. "The part where he said good night. I'm saying it." He made for the back door. The other man at the reading table rose and followed him. "Good night, Shaky. Drop me a post hole, sometime," said Charlie. The bullet-head man, now eating toast and shrimps, regarded See with a malicious sneer. See rummaged through the papers, selected a copy of The Black Range, and seated himself sidewise on the end of the billiard table; then laying the paper down he reached for the triangle and pyramided the pool balls. The swinging door crashed inward before a vicious kick. Caney stalked in. His pitted face was black with rage. Weir followed. As the door swung to there was a glimpse of savage eager faces crowded beyond. Caney glared across the billiard table. "We're not good enough for you to drink with, I reckon," he croaked. Charlie laid aside the triangle. The free lunch man laughed spitefully. "Aren't you?" said Charlie, indifferently. Caney raised his voice. "And I hear you been saying I was a gallows bird?" Charlie See adjusted a ball at the corner of the pyramid. Then he gave to Caney a slow and speculative glance. "Now that I take a good look at you--it seems probable, don't it?" "Damn you!" roared Caney. "What do you mean?" "Business!" No man's eye could have said which hand moved first. But See was the quicker. As Caney's gun flashed, a pool ball struck him over the heart, he dropped like a log, his bullet went wide. A green ball glanced from Jody's gun arm as it rose; the cartridge exploded harmlessly as the gun dropped; Weir staggered back, howling. He struck the swinging door simultaneously with the free-lunch man; and in that same second a battering-ram mob crashed against it from the other side. Weir was knocked sprawling; the door sagged from a broken hinge. See crouched behind the heavy table and pitched. Two things happened. Bullets plowed the green cloth of the table and ricocheted from the smooth slate; bushels of billiard balls streamed through the open door and thudded on quivering flesh. Flesh did not like that. It squeaked and turned and fled, tramping the fallen, screaming. Billiard balls crashed sickeningly on defenseless backs. In cold fact, Charlie See threw six balls; at that close range flesh could have sworn to sixty. Charlie felt rather than saw a bloodless face rise behind the bar; he ducked to the shelter of the billiard table as a bullet grooved the rail; his own gun roared, a heavy mirror splintered behind the bar: the Merman had also ducked. Charlie threw two shots through the partition. At the front, woodwork groaned and shattered as a six-foot mob passed through a four-foot door. Charlie had a glimpse of the crouching Merman, the last man through. For encouragement another shot, purposely high, crashed through the transom; the Merman escaped in a shower of glass. "How's that, umpire?" said Charlie See.