“Where Black Blanket gone?” grunted Red Horse. Harned knew his voice. “Damfino,” returned the drunken accents, cheerfully. “L-lit out, thas all I know. Whas you mean, hitting each orrer with bottles? Plenty more. I’ll go get it. You s-shay where you are.” The blood pounded through Harned’s veins at the sound of the shambling step on the floor. His own shoulders involuntarily hunched themselves, quivering as if he felt the tomahawk between them. Would they wait, or would they shy something at him and kill him the minute his back was turned? God! what nerve the man had! He was not taking a step the quicker—ah! Wickliff’s fingers were at the fastening. He flung the door back. Even then he staggered, keeping to his rôle. But the instant he was over the threshold the transformation came. He hurled the door back and threw his weight against it, quick as a cat. His teeth were set in a grin of hate, his eyeballs glittered, and he shook his pistol at the door. “Come on now, damn you!” he yelled. “We’re ready.” Like an echo to his defiance, there rose an awful and indescribable uproar from the room beyond—screams, groans, yells, and simultaneously the sound of a rush on the door. But for a minute the door held. The clatter of tomahawk blades shook it, but the wood was thick; it held. “Hatchet ready, pard?” said Wickliff. “When you feel the door give, slip the bolt to let ’em tumble in, and then strike for the women and the kids; strike hard. I’ll empty my pop into the heap. It won’t be such a big one if the door holds a minute longer.” “What are they doing in there?” gasped Harned. [Illustration: “‘IT WON’T BE SUCH A BIG ONE IF THE DOOR HOLDS’”] “They’re _dying_ in there, that’s what,” Wickliff replied, between his teeth, “and dying fast. _Now!_” The words stung Harned’s courage into a rush, like whiskey. He shot the bolt, and three Indians tumbled on them, with more—he could not see how many more—behind. Then the hatchet fell. It never faltered after that one glimpse Harned had of the thing at one Indian’s belt. He heard the bark of the pistol, twice, three times, the heap reeling; the three foremost were on the floor. He had struck them down too; but he was borne back. He caught the gleam of the knife lurching at him; in the same wild glance he saw Wickliff’s pistol against a broad red breast, and Red Horse’s tomahawk in the air. He struck—struck as Wickliff fired; struck not at his own assailant, but at Red Horse’s arm. It dropped, and Wickliff fired again. He did not see that; he had whirled to ward the other blow. But the Indian knife made only a random, nerveless stroke, and the Indian pitched forward, doubling up hideously in the narrow space, and thus slipping down—dead. “That’s over!” called Wickliff.