"The boys must 'a' gotten into the houses across the street," said Loudon. "They're a-firin' right through the saloon."
"She weel be dark een two hour," Laguerre remarked, irrelevantly.
"I know it. We'll have to finish up before then or they'll getaway. Plug any, Johnny?"
"One," was the laconic reply of that expert with a rifle.
"He didn't, neither!" denied Chuck Morgan. "I got him. Johnny was loadin' his rifle at the time the feller cashed. Johnny couldn't hit a flock o' barn doors flyin' low--not with his rifle."
"Oh, couldn't I, huh?" yapped Johnny Ramsay. "Well, if I hadn't 'a' got him you'd be a-lyin' there right quiet an' peaceful with yore hat over yore face. I hit what I aim at. I ain't been shootin' holes in boards like some people."
At this juncture the door of the Happy Heart opened a crack, and Johnny and Chuck forgot their argument at once. The door closed abruptly, the wood near the knob gashed and scarred by several bullets.
"This is gettin' monotonous," said Loudon. "I thought there'd be action this side an' there ain't a bit. The barn has gone to sleep. I'm goin' into the sheriff's shack. I'll bet it's empty."
"Dey geet you from the barn, mabbeso," Laguerre suggested.
"No, they won't--not if yuh keep 'em away from that hole."
Loudon laid his rifle down, pulled his hat firmly over his ears, and raced toward the shack, jerking out his revolvers as he ran. He reached the door of the shack without a shot having been fired at him.
Fully aware that death might be awaiting his entry, he drove his shoulder against the door and burst it open. He sprang across the doorsill and halted, balancing on the balls of his feet.
Save for the loud ticking of an alarm clock there was no sound in the shack. The door of the front room stood open. Through the doorway Loudon glimpsed a broken chair, and beside it, where the floor sagged, a pool of blood. Loudon walked into the front room.
His eyes beheld a scene of the wildest disorder. There had been a fierce fight in that front room. On his back on the floor, his legs under the table, lay Sheriff Block, his black beard reddened with blood from a wound in the cheek. One hand gripped the butt of a six-shooter and the other clutched the breast of his flannel shirt. There were two bullet-holes in the sheriff's chest.