Even as he spoke a shot struck the thick, iron hinge of the heavy door, the lead spattering viciously. Another ripped through the casement of the nearest window, and a shiver of glass was heard within, as the bullet spun through the shade of a lamp swinging from the beam above. Cawker ducked, unaccustomed to such sounds, and dove to the interior. Old Nolan, soldier of the Civil War and veteran of many an Indian skirmish, disdained to notice it. Geordie, bemoaning the luck that had left his pet rifle in Denver, busied himself with Nolan in "herding" the party within before himself following. Then Shiner was found missing. "He started with us," cried Nolan. "He wanted to go back to be with his boy, but we showed him he'd never get through. Those brutes would head him off and kick his life out. He must have--Good God, Mr. Geordie! Look where he lies!" And then they saw that the old plainsman, in his eagerness to make a way back to his possibly dying son, had quit the rush when half-way up, had turned eastward and sought a foot-path down the mountain-side, had found it guarded, like the rest, by a gang that yelled savage welcome at sight of him. Then, too late, he had turned again, had managed to run some fifty yards along the jagged slope, when a shot from a well-aimed rifle laid him low. With a leg broken just above the knee, poor Shiner went down, and without so much as a word, with only one glance into each other's eyes, Long Nolan and Geordie swooped down to the rescue. Breasting the hill fifty yards below him came the heaving throng of rioters, few of them, luckily, with fire-arms, but all bent on vengeance. Darting downhill to Shiner came the old and the new of the regiment he had known for years and swore by to the end--Nolan, its oldest sergeant when discharged; Graham, its youngest subaltern when so recently commissioned. But, old and new, they were one in purpose and in spirit. The trained muscles, the lithe young limbs of the new bore him bounding down the slope in half the time it took the elder. Shiner lay facing the coming throng, grim hate in his eyes and revolver in hand. In the fury of yells that arose he never heard the shout of encouragement from above. Geordie was bending over him, had seized him by the arm, was slinging him on his broad young back before ever Shiner saw the face of his rescuer, and Geordie, with his helpless burden, was stumbling up the height again before Nolan could join and aid him.