"They're goin' to shoot you," he sobbed, "from behind the Little Nugget, without givin' you a chanst! I had to tell you, an' they'll most kill me!" he wailed. Billy's eyes began to sparkle. The Kid tried to hold within the other's reach his little 22 calibre rifle, his most precious possession. "Here, take this!" he begged. Billy laughed outright, a generous, hearty laugh with just a shade of something serious in it. "Thank ye," said he, "I got one. And let me tell ye right yere, you Kid. Yore a white man, you are, and yore jest about the only white man in the place." He cast his eyes about him in the buckboard at his feet. "Yere ye be," he said, tugging at a pair of huge silver-ornamented Mexican spurs and leaning over to give them to the boy; "jest remember me by them thar; they has my name in 'em; and, look yere," he went on with a sudden inspiration, "you-all gets up gulch to my camp and takes what grub you finds and lies low until yo' paw an' th' rest gits over bein' mad. I don't know but what they _does_ kill you, if you shows up afore that." And he laughed again to see the boy's face brighten at this prospect of escaping the immediate wrath to follow. The little scene had been enacted in the middle of the silent street, so silent and so empty that the principal actors in it experienced an uncomfortable emotion of publicity, perhaps a little like that of an inexperienced speaker before the glare of footlights. The Kid, followed friskily by Peter, scuttled up the gulch, Billy stood up in his buckboard and faced the inscrutable row of houses. "Yo' damn coyotes!" he yelled, "thar goes the only _man_ in the whole outfit. Shoot! yo' Siwashes, shoot!" and he brought his long whip like a figure 8 across the flanks of all four horses at once. _Bang!_ reverberated a shot between the hills, and a bullet splashed white against the brake bar. Billy dropped the reins to the floor of the buckboard, and planted his foot on them. He steadied his knee against the seat, and threw down and back the lever of his Winchester for a shot. The beautiful trotting horse was pulling back in an ecstasy of terror at the end of his long lariat, shaking his head and planting his forefeet. Billy cursed savagely, but jerked loose the knot, and the beautiful trotting horse, with a final snort of terror, turned tail and disappeared in the direction of the mine. _Bang! Bang! Bang!_ went other shots from behind puffs of white smoke. The hills caught up the sound and rolled it back, and then back again, until it was quite impossible to count the discharges. There were perhaps a half-dozen men with rifles and a dozen or so with six-shooters, all pumping away at it as fast as they could. The buckboard was struck many times. One horse was hit, but only slightly--not enough to interfere with, but rather to encourage his speed. Billy fastened his eyes on the spot whence the first bullet had sped. Suddenly he threw his rifle to his shoulder.