Watkins," he addressed that old timer, "you tend to this. Feel around
cautious. Fill up the place full of lead. Work your men around through
the brush until you get them surrounded, and then just squat and shoot
and wait for morning."

Watkins sent out a dozen of the nearest men to circle the water troughs
in order to cut off further retreat, if that were projected. Then he
went about methodically selecting others to whom he assigned various
stations.

"Now you get a-plenty of catteridges," he told them, "and you lay low
and shoot 'em off. And if any of you gets shot I'll sure skin him
alive!"

In the meantime, the locomotive lantern had been lit so that the
interior of the courtyard was thrown into brilliant light. Needless to
say the opening blown in the walls did _not_ face toward the water
corrals. Of Artie Brower and the Morgan stallion we found hardly a
trace. They had been literally blown to pieces. Not one of us who had
known him but felt in his heart a kindly sorrow for the strange little
man. The sentry who had fired at him and who had thus, indirectly,
precipitated the catastrophe, was especially downcast.

"I told him to stop, and he kep' right on a-going, so I shot at him," he
explained. "What else was I to do? How was I to know he didn't belong to
that gang? He acted like it."

But when you think of it how could it have come out better? Poor, weak,
vice-ridden, likeable little beggar, what could the future have held for
him? And it is probable that his death saved many lives.