The movement was greeted with deafening report and a smoke-streak that blinded Taylor momentarily. In just the instant before the smoke-streak Taylor had caught a glimpse of a man standing near the center of the room beyond the door, and though he was rather disconcerted by the powder-flash and the searing of his left cheek by a bullet, he let his own gun off twice in as many seconds, and had the grim satisfaction of seeing the man stagger and tumble headlong to the floor. Taylor peered once at the man, to see if he needed further attention, decided he did not, and ran toward the front door, which opened upon the porch. He was just in time to see one of Carrington’s men sticking his head around a corner of the house. It was the man who had shot him from the little window. Taylor’s gun and the man’s roared simultaneously. Taylor had missed, for the man dodged back, and Taylor staggered, for the man’s bullet had struck him in the left thigh. He leaped, though limping, toward the corner, and when almost there a pistol crashed behind him, the bullet hitting his left shoulder, near where the other had gone in, the force of it spinning him clear around, so that he reeled and brought up against a porch column where it joined the rail. Grimly setting himself, grinning bitterly with the realization that the men had him between them, Taylor stood momentarily, fighting to overcome the terrible weakness that had stolen over him. His knees were trembling, the house, trees, and sky were agitated in sickening convolutions, and yet when he saw the head of a man appear from around a corner of the house at his right, he snapped a shot at it, and instantly as it was withdrawn he staggered to the corner, lurching heavily as he went, and turning just as he reached it to reply to a shot sent at him from the other corner of the house. A smoke-spurt met him as he reeled around the corner nearest him, and his knees sagged as he aimed his gun at a blurring figure in front of him. He saw the man go down, but his own strength was spent, and he knew the last bullet had struck him in a vital spot. Staggering drunkenly, he started for the side of the house and brought up against it with a crash. Again, as he had done inside the house, he stretched his arms out, flattening himself against the wall, but this time the arms were hanging more limply. He was seeing things through a crimson haze, and raising a hand, he wiped his eyes—and could see better, though there was a queer dimness in his vision and the world was still traveling in eccentric circles. He saw a blur in front of him—two men, he thought, though he knew he had accounted for two of the three gunmen who had followed him to the house. Then he heard a laugh—coarse and brutal—in a voice that he knew—Carrington’s.