"Hands high!" he ordered in a voice that crackled with pleasure at this miracle of deliverance, and Carlyle, realizing too late his blunder, stretched his arms overhead. Then giving back step by step and holding the would-be assassin as a shield at his front, Bear Cat edged to the corner of the table. He was bleeding, too, not in one place but in many. "Git behind me, Henderson," he commanded briefly, "an' make yore way ter ther door!" Roused to a fictitious strength by the infection of his rescuer's prowess, the wounded promoter sought to gain his feet, but his legs gave way under the seeming burden of tons. "I'm not just wounded," he mused, "I'm riddled and shredded." Sinking back, he said gaspingly, "Save yourself, Stacy.... I reckon ... I'm done for." But Bear Cat, crouching with his pistol thrust against the breast of his human shield, snapped out his words with a resolve which appeared ready to assume command over death itself. "Do what I tells ye! Ye kain't die yit--ye've got to endure fer a spell. I hain't done with ye!" [Illustration: Then giving back step by step, Bear Cat edged to the corner of the table] Pulling himself painfully up by the table's edge with his one sound arm, Jerry made a panting and final effort, but, as he struggled, part of his body became exposed and that was the signal for several desultory shots. He fell back again, bleeding at the mouth, and the spot where he collapsed was reddened with the flow from his wounds. Bear Cat Stacy's voice ripped out again in a furious roar. "Quit shootin'!" he yelled. "One more shoot an' I kills Sam Carlyle in his tracks. I warns ye!" Carlyle turned his head, too, and bellowed across his shoulder. "Fer God's sake boys, hold up! He means hit!" As the racket subsided, Stacy knelt, still covering his hostage and said briefly to Jerry, "Hook yore arm round my shoulders. I'll tote ye." He came laboriously to his feet again with his clinging burden of bleeding freight,--and abruptly Kinnard Towers appeared in the other door. His voice was raised in a semblance of rage, corroborated by an anger so well-simulated that it made his face livid. "What manner of hell's deviltry air all this?" he thundered. "Who attacked these men in my place? By God, I don't 'low ter hev my house turned into no murder den." His minions, acting on his orders, knew their chief too well to argue, and as they fell shamefacedly silent, Kinnard shouted to Bear Cat. "Son, let me succor ye. He looks badly hurted." "Succor, hell!" retorted Bear Cat grimly. "You an' me will talk later. Now ef any feller follers me, I aims ter kill this man ye hires ter do yore murderin'." At the hitching-rack several horses still stood tethered. There was need for haste, for one fugitive was perhaps bleeding to death and the other was wounded and exhausted. Some of the scattered murderers might be already waiting, too, in the shadows of the thickets.