“They’re waiting for me,” was Norton’s quick thought.  “Galloway knew I’d come.”

He passed on, came to the second window and paused again.  The brief, almost breathless silence within, which had followed the Kid’s laugh, had already been dissipated by the customary Casa Blanca sounds; a guitar was strumming, chips clicked, a bottle was set heavily upon the bar, a chair scraped.  Norton frowned; a moment ago something happened in there to still men’s tongues.  What was it?  It was Galloway who gave him his answer.

“So you came, did you, Vidal?” There was a jeer in the heavy voice.  “Scared to come, eh?  And scared worse to stay away!” Galloway’s short laugh was as unpleasant as ever Rickard’s had been.

“Si; I am here,” the voice of Vidal Nunez was answering, quick, eager, sibilant with its unmistakable nervous excitement.  “Pete tell me what you say an’ I come.”  He lifted his voice abruptly, breaking into a soft Southern oath.  “Like a cat, to jump through the little window an’ roll on the floor an’ by God, jus’ in time.  There is one man at the back with a gun an’ one man in front an’ another man . . .”

“Let ’em come,” cried Galloway loudly, a heavy hand smiting a table top so that a glass jumped and fell breaking to the floor.  “Only,” and he sent his voice booming out warningly, “any man who chips in unasked and starts trouble in my house can take what’s coming to him.”

So then Vidal had just arrived, it had been his sudden entrance which had invoked the silence in the barroom.  Norton merely shrugged; there had been a chance of taking Vidal alone, intercepting him.  But that chance had not been one to wait for; now it was past, negligible, not to be regretted.  At last he knew where Vidal Nunez was and it was his business to make an arrest and not to wait upon further chance.  The man who is not ready to go into a crowd to get his law-breaker is not the man to stand for sheriff in the southwest country.

“Coming, Galloway!” Norton’s ringing shout came back in answer.  Suddenly the steady pulse of his blood had been stirred, the hot hope stood high in his heart again that he and Jim Galloway were going to look into each other’s eyes with guns talking and an end of a long devious trail in sight.  For the moment he half forgot Vidal Nunez whom he could fancy cowering in a corner.

Then when he knew that every man in the Casa Blanca had turned sharply at his voice he ran from the window to the street, turned the corner of the building and in at the wide front doorway.  A short hall, a closed door confronting him . . . then that had been flung open and on its threshold, a gun in each hand, his hat far back on his head, his eyes on fire, he stood looking in on a half dozen men and three glinting steel barrels which, describing quick arcs, were whipped from the window toward him.  A gun in Galloway’s hand, one in the hand of Vidal Nunez, the third already spitting fire as Kid Rickard’s narrowed eyes shone above it.  The other men had fallen back precipitately to right and left; Norton noted that Elmer Page was among them, a pace or two from Rickard’s side.