"What ails you to-day?" asked Archie. "Lost your nerve?" "I haven’t lost my nut." "We’ll give you three minutes," said the voice, "then if you don’t come out, holding up your hands, we’ll fire." For what seemed a long time there was utter quiet, then bullets tore through the pine boards of the little shanty and Archie sprang to the window and fired. Curly was squatting on the floor. Archie fired again, and again, and yet again. "I’ve only got one left," he said, turning from the window. "All right, then we’ll cave." Curly got up, went to the door, flung it open and held up his hands. The mob cheered. But Archie stayed. The officer called again, Curly called, the crowd called; then the shooting began again. Presently Archie appeared in the doorway and looked about with a white, defiant face. And there, before him, a rod away, stood Kouka, revolver in hand. He saw Archie, his brow wrinkled, and he smiled darkly. [Illustration: Archie looked about with a white, defiant face] "You might as well--" he began. Archie looked at him an instant, slowly raised his revolver above his head, lowered it in deliberate aim, fired, and Kouka fell to his knees, toppled forward with a groan and collapsed in a heap on the ground, dead. The crowd was stricken still. Archie stood looking at Kouka, his eyes burning, his face white, his smoking revolver lowered in his hand. A smile came to his pale, tense lips. Then the crowd closed in on him; the policemen, angry and ferocious, caught and pinioned him, began to club him. The crowd pressed closer, growing savage, shaking fists at him, trying to strike him. Suddenly some one began to call for a rope. Then the policemen, so eager a moment before to wreak their own vengeance on him, were now concerned for his safety. A sergeant gave a command; they dragged Archie toward the patrol wagon. The crowd surged that way, and Archie, bareheaded, his yellow hair disordered, his eyes flashing, his white brow stained with blood, stared about on the policemen and on the crowd with a look of hatred. Then he glanced back to where some men were bending over Kouka, and he smiled again. "Well, I croaked him all right," he said. A patrolman struck him with a club; and he staggered as the blow fell with a sharp crash on his head. "Get on there!" said the sergeant, cursing him. He was thrown into the patrol wagon beside Curly, and he sat there, white, with the blood trickling in two streams from his forehead, his eyes flashing, and the strange smile on his lips whenever he looked back where Kouka lay. The patrol wagon dashed away. VI Marriott was sensible of a hostile atmosphere the moment he entered the police station. The desk sergeant glanced at him with disapproval, kept him waiting, finally consulted an inspector, blew savagely into a speaking tube, and said: "Here’s a young lawyer to see Koerner."