Stanton shrieked and waved her arms.  Indeed, she seemed another woman from the one upon whose breast Allie had laid her head just a little while before.

“No, you won’t take her to Neale!” cried Stanton.

The cowboy stepped down slowly, guardedly, but he kept on.  Allie saw men run out of the crowded dance-hall into the open space behind Stanton.  Dark, hateful, well-remembered faces of Fresno—­Mull—­ Black!  Allie pressed the cowboy’s arm to warn him, and he, letting go of her, appeared to motion her behind him.

“Stanton!  Get out of my way!” yelled Larry.  His voice rang with a wild, ruthless note; it carried far and stiffened every figure except that of the frantic woman.  With convulsed face, purple in its fury, and the hot eyes of a beast of prey she ran right up at the cowboy, heedless of the gun he held leveled low down.

He shot her.  She swayed backward, uttering a low and horrible cry, and even as she swayed her face blanched and her eyes changed.  She fell heavily, with her golden hair loosening and her bare white arms spreading wide.  Then in the horror-stricken silence she lay there, still conscious, but with an awful hunted realization in the eyes fixed upon the cowboy, a great growing splotch of blood darkening the white of her dress.

Larry King did not look at Stanton and he kept moving down the steps; he was walking faster now, and he drew Allie behind him.  The first of that stunned group to awake to action was the giant Fresno, as, with blind, unreasoning passion, he attempted to draw upon the cowboy.  The boom of Larry’s big gun and the crash of Fresno as he fell woke the spellbound crowd into an uproar.  Screaming women and shouting men rushed madly back into the dance-hall.

Larry turned toward the hallway leading to the street.  Mull and Black began shooting as he turned, and hit him, for Allie, holding fast to him, felt the vibrating shock of his body.  With two swift shots Larry killed both men.  Mull fell across the width of the hall.  And as Allie stumbled over his body she looked down to see his huge head, his ruddy face, and the great ox-eyes, rolling and ghastly.  In that brief glance she saw him die.

The cowboy strode fast now.  Allie, with hands clenched in his coat, clung desperately to him.  Hollow booms of guns filled the passageway, and hoarse shouts of alarmed men sounded from the street.  Burned powder smoke choked Allie.  The very marrow of her bones seemed curdled.  She saw the red belches of fire near and far; she passed a man floundering and bellowing on the floor; she felt Larry jerk back as if struck, and then something hot grazed her shoulder.  A bullet had torn clear through him, from breast to back.  He staggered, but he went on.  Another man lay on the threshold of the wide door, his head down the step, and his pallid face blood-streaked.  A smoking gun lay near his twitching hand.  That pallid face belonged to Dayss.