Just before daybreak a guard stationed two blocks west of the court-house noticed a flare of light in the windows of a building opposite.  He glanced toward the east.  The dim, ruddy glow in the windows was not that of dawn.  He ran to the building and tried to open the door to the stairway.  As he wrenched at the door a subdued soft roar swelled and grew louder.  Turning, he ran to the next corner, calling to the guard.  The alarm of fire was relayed to the court-house.

Meanwhile the two cowboys ran back to the building and hammered on the door.  Some one in an upstairs room screamed.  Suddenly the door gave inward.  A woman carrying a cheap gilt clock pushed past them and sank in a heap on the sidewalk.  The guards heard some one running down the street.  One of them tied a handkerchief over his face and groped his way up the narrow stairs.  The hall above was thick with smoke.  A door sprang open, and a man carrying a baby and dragging a woman by the hand bumped into the guard, cursed, and stumbled toward the stairway.

The cowboy ran from door to door down the long, narrow hall, calling to the inmates.  In one room he found a lamp burning on a dresser and two children asleep.  He dragged them from bed and carried them to the stairway.  From below came the surge and snap of flames.  He held his breath and descended the stairs.  A crowd of half-clothed workmen had gathered.  Among them he saw several of the guards.

“Who belongs to these kids?” he cried.

A woman ran up.  “She’s here,” she said, pointing to the woman with the gilt clock, who still lay on the sidewalk.  A man was trying to revive her.  The cowboy noticed that the unconscious woman still gripped the gilt clock.

He called to a guard.  Together they dashed up the stairs and ran from room to room.  Toward the back of the building they found a woman insanely gathering together a few cheap trinkets and stuffing them into a pillow-case.  She was trying to work a gilt-framed lithograph into the pillow-case when they seized her and led her toward the stairway.  She fought and cursed and begged them to let her go back and get her things.  A burst of flame swept up the stairway.  The cowboys turned and ran back along the hall.  One of them kicked a window out.  The other tied a sheet under the woman’s arms and together they lowered her to the ground.

Suddenly the floor midway down the hall sank softly in a fountain of flame and sparks.

“Reckon we jump,” said one of the cowboys.

Lowering himself from the rear window, he dropped.  His companion followed.  They limped to the front of the building.  A crowd massed in the street, heedless of the danger that threatened as a section of roof curled like a piece of paper, writhed, and dropped to the sidewalk.

A group of guards appeared with a hose-reel.  They coupled to a hydrant.  A thin stream gurgled from the hose and subsided.  The sheriff ran to the steps of a building and called to the crowd.