He swung the bar high with both hands, and it descended on the negro's crown. The man went backwards, but another who carried a long gun sprang over him, and the heavy bar came crashing down on his naked arm. Then it whirled again, and there was a curious thud as it left its mark upon a dusky face. There was a clamor from the men below, a gasp behind Nares, and a folded canvas chair struck the next negro on the breast. He, too, lost his balance, and in another moment the stairway was empty except for one of the dusky men who lay still upon the lower steps of it. Nares stood on the veranda, with a suffused face, and the perspiration dripping from him, and smiled curiously when the man in charge of the station glanced at him with wonder and a vague reproof in his eyes.
"I am not sure that I have anything to regret," he said. "They are coming back again."
Herrero's boys were once more at the foot of the stairway, trampling on their comrade as they scrambled over him, but there were now two men with extemporized weapons at the head of it who stood above them and had them at a disadvantage. Nares was, however, never quite clear as to what happened during the next few minutes, for an unreasoning fury came upon him, and he saw only the woolly heads and dusky faces as he gasped and smote, though he was vaguely conscious that now and then a shattered chair somebody whirled by the legs swung above his head. Then a long gun flashed, and the detonation was answered by a sharper, ringing crash. One of Herrero's boys screamed shrilly, and the half-naked figures went scrambling down the stairway. They had scarcely floundered clear of it when a man in white duck appeared in the space below, and flung up a rifle, and another of the boys who went down headlong lay writhing horribly in the sand. After that there was a shouting and a patter of flying feet, and further dusky men with matchets and Snider rifles poured out of the path that wound down the hillside. Nares quietly laid the bar he held against the wall, and turned to the others with a gasp.
Except for the two unsightly objects that lay in the soft moonlight, there was no sign of Herrero's boys when Ormsgill walked up the stairway with a rifle in his hand. A little smoke curled from the breech which he opened before he shook hands with Nares.