Through the door! The desk sergeant and a couple of men gaped blankly down the muzzle of Hammer’s gun, their minds refusing to comprehend, their hands rising by stunned automatism. Others of the gang poured down the short halls, into every room. There came yells, the clatter of feet, the brief sharp bark of a gun and the racket of combat.

Hoofs pounded outside. A gun cracked, and one of Hammer’s men standing guard at the door, fell. Hammer himself jumped to the window, smashed the glass of it with his rifle butt, and shot at the half-dozen or so mounted police outside—returning from their beats, no doubt, and alarmed at what they saw.

He had little opportunity to practice. Shells were too scarce. His first shot went wild, the second hit a horse, the third was as ineffectual as the first. But the police did retreat. They weren’t such good shots either, though a couple of slugs whined viciously close, through the window and thudding into the wall beyond.

“Here, Dick!” His men were returning from the interior of the building, and they bore firearms, bore them as they would something holy and infinitely beautiful, for these were the way to a life worth living. “Here—shootin’ weapons!”

Hammer grabbed a submachine gun and cut loose. The troopers scattered, leaving their dead, and fled down the streets. And there were those other two bands entering—Hammer laughed for sheer joy.

“We got the whole station,” reported one of his men. “Bob got it in the leg, an’ I see they plugged Little Jack an’ Tony. But the place is ours!”

“Yeah. Lock up these cops, take what weapons an’ horses you need, an’ ride aroun’ town. Herd ever’body down into the main square in the center o’ town. Be careful, there’ll be some trouble an’ killin’, but we don’t have to be on the receivin’ end o’ any o’ it. Mart, Rog, an’ One-Ear, hold the station here an’ look after our wounded, Sambo an’ Putzy, follow me. I’m goin’ t’ the square now to—take possession!”

* * *

There was noise in the street, running and stamping feet, shouts and oaths and screams. Now and then laughter or gunfire. Roderick Wayne gasped out of sleep, sweating. What a dream! Nightmare recollection of the black years—

No dream!

There was a tremendous kicking and beating on the door, and a voice bawling in some uncouth accent: “Open up in there! Open up in the name o’ the law!”

More’ laughter, like wolves baying. Someone yelling. A cry that choked off into silence. Wayne jumped out of bed. Even then he was dimly surprised to find he wasn’t shaking and gibbering in blind panic. “Get Al, Karen,” he said. “Stay inside, in a back room. I’ve got to look into this.”

He stopped in the living room to get his rifle. It was only a souvenir now, few cartridges left, but he had killed men with it in the black years. And must I go through that again? No—please not!