Instantly then, Yorke, who was the nearest, sprang at him like a tiger and, ranging one arm around his enemy’s bull neck, strove with the other to wrest the gun from his grasp.  It was a feat however, more easily imagined than accomplished—­to disarm a powerful, active man.  The tense fingers tightened immediately upon the weapon and resisted to their uttermost.  Slavin and Redmond both had their side-arms drawn now, but they were afraid to use them, on Yorke’s account.  The combatants were whirling giddily to and fro, the muzzle of the gun describing every point of the compass.

Taking a risky chance, Slavin, watching his opportunity suddenly closed with the struggling men and, raising his arm brought the barrel of his heavy Colt’s .45 smashing down on the knuckles of the crazed man’s gun-hand.  Instantaneously the latter’s weapon dropped to the floor.

Bang!  The cocked hammer discharged one chamber—­the bullet ricocheting off the brass bar-rail deflected through a cluster of glasses and bottles, smashing them and a long saloon-mirror into a myriad splinters.  But few of the company there escaped the deadly flying glass, as badly-gashed faces immediately testified.  It all happened in quicker time than it takes to relate.

“‘Crown’ him!” gasped Yorke, still grimly hanging onto his man, “‘Crown’ the ——­ good and hard!”

Redmond sprang forward, grasping a small, shot-loaded police “billy,” but Slavin interposed a huge arm.

“Nay!” he said sharply, and with curious eagerness, “Du not ‘chrown’ um bhoy! lave um tu me!” And he grasped one of the big, struggling man’s wrists firmly in a vise-like grip.  “Leggo, Yorkey!”

The latter obeyed with alacrity, and stooping he picked up the fallen gun.  He had an inkling of what was coming.

“Ah-hh!” Slavin gloated gutterally, as he whirled his victim giddily around and brought the man up facing him with a violent jerk—­“Windy Moran, avick!”—­softly and cruelly—­“me wud-be cock av a wan-harse dump!—­me wud-be ‘bad-man’! . . .  Oh, yes! ‘tis both shockin’ an’ brutil tu misthreat ye I know but—­surely, surely yeh desarve somethin’ for all this!” And he drew back his formidable right arm.

Smack!  The terrific impact of that one, terrible open-handed slap nearly knocked his victim through the bar-room wall.  The head rocked sideways and the big body turned completely round.  Eyes rushing water and one profile now resembling a slab of bloodied liver, the man reeled about in a circle as if bereft of sight.

“Oh-hh!—­Ooh!—­No-o!—­Ah-hh!” The wild, moaning cry for quarter came gaspingly out of puffed, blood-foamed lips.  But there was no mercy in Slavin.  He looked round at the wrecked bar, the glass-slashed bleeding faces of his men and the rest of the saloon’s occupants.  He thought upon many things—­how near ignoble death many of them had been but a few minutes before—­upon insult and threat flaunted at them by a drunken, ruffling braggadocio!—­and he jerked the latter to him once more.