For a week night had been a terror on the Cross Bar-8. No sooner had the exhausted outfit fallen asleep than bits of window glass would fly about them, cutting and stinging. There was not a whole window pane in the house and the door was so full of lead that it sagged on its half-shattered hinges. Cooking utensils were fast deserving premiums, for hardly an unperforated tin could be found on the premises. And their cook, a Mexican, who most devoutly believed in a personal devil and a brimstone hell, and who feared that he was living in uncomfortable proximity to both, stood the strain for just two nights and then, panic-stricken, had fled from the accursed place and left them to get their own meals as best they could. The protection of the saints was all very well and good under ordinary circumstances, but when they failed to stop the bullets which passed through his cook shack and which more than once had grazed him, it was time for him to find some place far removed from the Cross Bar-8, and where the devil was less strong. When the saints allowed a devil-sped bullet to completely shatter a crucifix it was time to migrate, which he did, but in broad daylight when the outfit had departed and when the devil was not in evidence. The interiors of both the ranch house and the bunk house were wrecked. The clock, the pride of the foreman, stood with half its wheels buried in the wall behind it by a .50 caliber slug, its hands pointing to half-past one. Lead filled the interior walls, where opposite windows, and the holes and splinters were a disgrace. Sombreros, equipment and the few pictures the walls boasted were like tops of pepper shakers. No sooner was a light shown than it became the target for a shot, and more than one wound gave proof as to the accuracy of the perpetrator. So tired that they fell asleep at supper, the men were constantly awakened by the noise of devastation and the whining hum of the bullets. Pursuit was a failure, and was also hazardous, as proven by Bert Hodge's arm, broken by a .50 caliber slug from somewhere.