the red flare splitting the gray gloom. The speeding bullets crashed
through the leather of the coach, splintering the wood; the Mexican
rolled to the floor, uttering one inhuman cry, and lay motionless; a
great volume of black smoke wavered in the still air.

"Walt! Wait until they get to their feet!" Hamlin cried eagerly. "Ah!
there they come--now unlimber."

He saw only those black, indistinct figures, leaping out of the smoke,
converging on the coach, their naked arms uplifted, their voices
mingling in savage yells. Like lightning he worked his rifle, heart
throbbing to the excitement, oblivious to all else; almost without
realization he heard the deeper bellow of Moylan's Winchester, the
sharp bark of a revolver at his very ear. Gonzales was all right,
then! Good! He never thought of the girl, never saw her grip the
pistol from the Mexican's dead hand, and crawl white-faced, over his
body, to that front seat. All he really knew was that those devils
were coming, leaping, crowding through the smoke wreathes; he saw them
stumble, and rise again; he saw one leap into the air, and then crash
face down; he saw them break, circling to right and left, crouching as
they ran. Two reached the stage--only two! One pitched forward, a
revolver bullet between his eyes, his head wedged in the spokes of the
wheel; the other Hamlin struck with emptied rifle-barrel as his red
hand gripped the door, sending him sprawling back into the dirt. It
was all the work of a minute, an awful minute, intense,
breathless--then silence, the smoke drifting away, the dark night
hiding the skulking runners.