Bull sighed.  “I ain’t got much time, partner,” he said.  Approaching the door, he examined it wistfully.  “But, maybe, they’s another way.”  He drew back a little, raised his right leg, and smashed the heavy cowhide boot against the door.  The wood split from top to bottom, and Bull’s leg was driven on through the aperture.  He paused to wrench the fragments of the door from lock and hinges and then beckoned to Pete Reeve.  “Look for your gun in here, Reeve.”

The little man cast one twinkling glance at his companion and then was instantly among the litter of the closet floor.  He emerged strapping a belt about him, the holster tugging far down, so that the muzzle of the gun was almost at his knee.  Bull appreciated the diminutive size of the man for the first time, seeing him in conjunction with the big gun on his thigh.

There was an odd change in the little man also, the moment his gun was in place.  He tugged his broad-brimmed hat a little lower across his eyes and poised himself, as if on tiptoe; his glance was a constant flicker about the room until it came to rest on Bull.  “Suppose you lemme in on the meaning of all this.  Who are you and where do you figure on letting me loose?  What in thunder is it all about?”

“We’ll talk later.  Now you got to get started.”

Bull waved to the door.  Pete Reeve darted past him with noiseless steps and paused a moment at the threshold of the jail.  Plainly he was ready for fight or flight, and his right hand was toying constantly with the holstered butt of his gun.  Bull followed to the outside.

“Hosses?” asked the little man curtly.

“On foot,” answered Bull with equal brevity, and he led the way straight across the street.  There was no danger of being seen.  All the life of the town was drawn to a center about the hotel.  Lights were flashing behind its windows, men were constantly pounding across the veranda, running in and out.  Bull led the way past the building and cut for the cottonwoods.

“And now?” demanded Pete Reeve.  “Now, partner?”

That word stung Bull.  It had not been applied to him more than a half a dozen times in his life, together with its implications of free and equal brotherhood.  To be called partner by the great man who had conquered terrible Uncle Bill Campbell!

“They’s a mess in the hotel,” said Bull, explaining as shortly as he could.  “Seems that Sheriff Anderson was the gent that done the killing of Armstrong.  It got found out and the sheriff tried to get away.  Lots of noise and trouble.”

“Ah,” said Reeve, “it was him, then—­the old hound!  I might have knowed!  But I kep’ on figuring that they was two of ’em!  Well, the sheriff was a handy boy with his gun.  Did he drop anybody before they got him?  I heard two guns go off like one.  Them must of been the sheriff’s cannons.”

“They was,” said Bull, “but them bullets didn’t hit nothing but wood.”