“I’ll take my chance out there.  That’s my lookout,” said the man, moving toward the entrance.

“No.  You’ll stay here.”  Dave’s hard, chill gaze swept over his crew.  Several of them were backing Dillon and others were wavering.  “It’s your only chance, and I’m here to see you take it.  Don’t take another step.”

Dillon took one, and went crumpling to the granite floor before Dave could move.  Shorty had knocked him down with the butt of his nine-inch-barrel revolver.

Already smoke was filling the cave.  The fire had raced to its mouth and was licking in with long, red, hungry tongues.  The tunnel timbers were smouldering.

“Lie down and breathe the air close to the ground,” ordered Dave, just as though a mutiny had not been quelled a moment before.  “Stay down there.  Don’t get up.”

He found an old tomato can and used it to throw water from the seep-spring upon the burning wood.  Shorty and one or two of the other men helped him.  The heat near the mouth was so intense they could not stand it.  All but Sanders collapsed and staggered back to sink down to the fresher air below.

Their place of refuge packed with smoke.  A tree crashed down at the mouth and presently a second one.  These, blazing, sent more heat in to cook the tortured men inside.  In that bakehouse of hell men showed again their nature, cursing, praying, storming, or weeping as they lay.

The prospect hole became a madhouse.  A big Hungarian, crazed by the torment he was enduring, leaped to his feet and made for the blazing hill outside.

“Back there!” Dave shouted hoarsely.

The big fellow rushed him.  His leader flung him back against the rock wall.  He rushed again, screaming in crazed anger.  Sanders struck him down with the long barrel of the forty-five.  The Hungarian lay where he fell for a few minutes, then crawled back from the mouth of the pit.

At intervals others tried to break out and were driven back.

Dave’s eyebrows crisped away.  He could scarcely draw a breath through his inflamed throat.  His eyes were swollen and almost blinded with smoke.  His lungs ached.  Whenever he took a step he staggered.  But he stuck to his job hardily.  The tomato can moved more jerkily.  It carried less water.  But it still continued to drench the blazing timbers at the mouth of the tunnel.

So Dave held the tunnel entrance against the fire and against his own racked and tortured men.  Occasionally he lay down to breathe the air close to the floor.  There was no circulation, for the tunnel ended in a wall face.  But the smoke was not so heavy close to the ground.

Man after man succumbed to the stupor of unconsciousness.  Men choked, strangled, and even died while their leader, his hair burnt and his eyes almost sightless, face and body raw with agonizing wounds, crept feebly about his business of saving their lives.

Fire-crisped and exhausted, he dropped down at last into forgetfulness of pain.  And the flames, which had fought with such savage fury to blot out the little group of men, fell back sullenly in defeat.  They had spent themselves and could do no more.