The cowboys raced past, and reined in a block below the court-house.  As they paused to reload, a riderless horse, badly wounded, plunged among them.  A cowboy caught the horse and shot it.  Another rider, gripping his shirt above his abdomen, writhed and groaned, begging piteously for some one to kill him.  Before they could get him off his horse he spurred out, and, pulling his carbine from the scabbard, charged into the mob, in the square.  With the lever going like lightning, he bored into the mob, fired his last shot in the face of a man that had caught his horse’s bridle, and sank to the ground.  Shattered and torn he lay, a red pulp that the mob trampled into the dust.

The upper windows of the court-house filled with figures.  An irregular fire drove the cowboys to the shelter of a side street.  In the wide doorway of the court-house several men crouched behind a blue-steel tripod.  Those still in the square crowded past and into the building.  Behind the stone pillars of the entrance, guarded by a machine gun, the crazy mob cheered drunkenly and defied the guards to dislodge them.

From a building opposite came a single shot, and the group round the machine gun lifted one of their fellows and carried him back into the building.  Again came the peremptory snarl of a carbine, and another figure sank in the doorway.  The machine gun was dragged back.  Its muzzle still commanded the square, but its operators were now shielded by an angle of the entrance.

Back on the side street, the old ex-Ranger had difficulty in restraining his men.  They knew by the number of shots fired that some of their companions had gone down.

The sheriff was about to call for volunteers to capture the machine gun when a white handkerchief fluttered from an upper window of the court-house.  Almost immediately a man appeared on the court-house steps, alone and indicating by his gestures that he wished to parley with the guard.  The sheriff dismounted and stepped forward.

One of his men checked him.  “That’s a trap, John.  They want to get you, special.  Don’t you try it.”

“It’s up to me,” said the sheriff, and shaking off the other’s hand he strode across the square.

At the foot of the steps he met the man.  The guard saw them converse for a brief minute; saw the sheriff shake his fist in the other’s face and turn to walk back.  As he turned, a shot from an upper window dropped him in his stride.

The cowboys yelled and charged across the square.  The machine gun stuttered and sprayed a fury of slugs that cut down horses and riders.  A cowboy, his horse shot from under him, sprang up the steps and dragged the machine gun into the open.  A rain of slugs from the upper windows struck him down.  His companions carried him back to cover.  The machine gun stood in the square, no longer a menace, yet no one dared approach it from either side.

When the old Ranger, who had orders to hold his men in reserve, heard that the sheriff had been shot down under a flag of truce, he shook his head.