“Is that all?” said Sally scornfully.

“Don’t follow me, Sally,” said Bard.  “Stay out of this.  Boys, you may have been paid high, but I don’t think you’ve been paid high enough to risk taking a chance with me.  If you put me out with the first shot that ends it, of course, but the chances are that I’ll be alive when I hit the floor, and if I am, I’ll have my gun working—­and I won’t miss.  One or two of you are going to drop.”

He surveyed them with a quick glance which seemed to linger on each face.

“I don’t know who’ll go first.  But now I’m going to walk straight for that door, and I’m going out of it.”

He moved slowly, deliberately toward the door, around the table.  Still they did not shoot.

“Bard!” commanded the voice which had spoken from nowhere before.  “Stop where you are.  Are you fool enough to think that I’ll let you go?”

“Are you William Drew?”

“I am, and you are——­”

“The son of John Bard.  Are you in this house?”

“I am; Bard, listen to me for thirty seconds——­”

“Not for three.  Sally, go out of this room and through that door.”

There was a grim command in his voice.  It started her moving against her will.  She paused and looked back with an imploring gesture.

“Go on,” he repeated.

And she passed out of the door and stood there, a glimmering figure against the night.  Still there was not a shot fired, though all those guns were trained on Bard.

“You’ve got me Drew,” he called, “but I’ve got you, and your hirelings—­all of you, and I’m going to take you to hell with me—­to hell!”

He jerked his gun up and fired, not at a man, for the bullet struck the thin chain which held the gasoline lamp suspended, struck it with a clang, and it rushed down to the table.  It struck, but not with the loud explosion which Bard had expected.  There was a dull report, as of a shot fired at a great distance, the scream of Sally from the door, and then liquid fire spurted from the lamp across the table, whipped in a flare to the ceiling, and licked against the walls.  It shot to all sides but it shot high, and every man was down on his face.

Anthony, scarcely believing that he was still alive, rushed for the door, with a cry of agony ringing in his ears from the voice beyond the room.  One man in all that crowd was near enough or had the courage to obey the master even to the uttermost.  The gaunt form of Calamity Ben blocked the doorway in front of Bard, blocked it with poised revolver.

“Halt!” he yelled.

But the other rushed on.  Calamity whipped down the gun and fired, but even before the trigger was pulled he was sagging toward the floor, for Bard had shot to kill.  Over the prostrate form of the cowpuncher he leaped, and into the night, where the white face of Sally greeted him.

Outside the red inferno of that room, as if the taste of blood had maddened him, he raised his arms and shouted, like one crying a wild prayer:  “William Drew!  William Drew!  Come out to me!”