strength was weakening.  His legs bent and buckled under him.  All at once he whipped out his two big guns and began to fire as he staggered—­at random.  He killed the wounded Blicky.  In the melee he ran against Jesse Smith and thrust both guns at him.  Jesse saw the peril and with a shriek he fired point-blank at Gulden.  Then as Gulden pulled triggers both men fell.  But Gulden rose, bloody-browed, bawling, still a terrible engine of destruction.  He seemed to glare in one direction and shoot in another.  He pointed the guns and apparently pulled the triggers long after the shots had all been fired.

Kells was on his knees now with only one gun.  This wavered and fell, wavered and fell.  His left arm hung broken.  But his face flashed white through the thin, drifting clouds of smoke.

Besides Gulden the bandit Pike was the only one not down, and he was hard hit.  When he shot his last he threw the gun away, and, drawing a knife, he made at Kells.  Kells shot once more, and hit Pike, but did not stop him.  Silence, after the shots and yells, seemed weird, and the groping giant, trying to follow Pike, resembled a huge phantom.  With one wrench he tore off a leg of the overturned table and brandished that.  He swayed now, and there was a whistle where before there had been a roar.

Pike fell over the body of Blicky and got up again.  The bandit leader staggered to his feet, flung the useless gun in Pike’s face, and closed with him in weak but final combat.  They lurched and careened to and fro, with the giant Gulden swaying after them.  Thus they struggled until Pike moved under Gulden’s swinging club.  The impetus of the blow carried Gulden off his balance.  Kells seized the haft of the knife still protruding from the giant’s neck, and he pulled upon it with all his might.  Gulden heaved up again, and the movement enabled Kells to pull out the knife.  A bursting gush of blood, thick and heavy, went flooding before the giant as he fell.

Kells dropped the knife, and, tottering, surveyed the scene before him—­the gasping Gulden, and all the quiet forms.  Then he made a few halting steps, and dropped near the door.

Joan tried to rush out, but what with the unsteadiness of her limbs and Jim holding her as he went out, too, she seemed long in getting to Kells.

She knelt beside him, lifted his head.  His face was white—­his eyes were open.  But they were only the windows of a retreating soul.  He did not know her.  Consciousness was gone.  Then swiftly life fled.

20

Cleve steadied Joan in her saddle, and stood a moment beside her, holding her hands.  The darkness seemed clearing before her eyes and the sick pain within her seemed numbing out.

“Brace up!  Hang—­to your saddle!” Jim was saying, earnestly.  “Any moment some of the other bandits might come. ...  You lead the way.  I’ll follow and drive the pack-horse.”

“But, Jim, I’ll never be able to find the back-trail,” said Joan.