“Come out, Galloway,” said Struve coldly.  “I’ve got you covered.”

Since things were bad enough as they were, and he had no desire to make them worse and saw no opportunity to better them, Jim Galloway, his hand nursing a bleeding shoulder, stumbled awkwardly through the opening.

“Is that all of ’em, Roddy?” called Cutter.  Norton didn’t answer.  The deputy called again.  Then, while the crowd surged about door and window.  Cutter came in, a revolver in his right hand, a torch of a burning fagot in his left, held high.

Vidal Nunez was dead; not from a blow upon the head, but from a chance bullet through the heart after he had fallen.  Kid Rickard, his sullen eyes wide with their pain, lay half under a poker table.  Lying across the body of Nunez, as though still guarding his prisoner, was the quiet form of Rod Norton, his face bloodlessly white save for the smear of blood which had run from the wound hidden by the close-cropped, black hair.

CHAPTER XII

WAVERING IN THE BALANCE

Ignacio Chavez, waiting to ask no questions, had raced away through the darkness to beat out a wild alarm upon his bells.  Later he would learn how many were dead and would set the Captain mourning.  But already had San Juan poured out her handful of citizens upon the street.

“Keep those men where they are,” called Tom Cutter to Struve.  “Every damned one of them; there’ll be an answer wanted for to-night’s work.  Get a doctor, somebody; Patten or Miss Page.”

Candles were brought; presently a lamp was found and set on the bar.  The curious began to desert Struve and his prisoners outside, and to crowd about Cutter and the two forms lying still in the corner.  Kid Rickard, cursing now and then, had dragged himself a little away and grew quiet, half propped up against the wall.  Struve, as the fire of fagots and grass began to burn low, commanded Galloway to lead the way back into the barroom and herded five other men after him, the shotgun promising a mutilated body to any man of them who sought to run for it.

“Nunez is dead,” reported the deputy sheriff, getting up from his knees.  “Norton is alive and that’s about all.  A shot along the side of the head.”

He turned slowly toward Galloway who, with steady hands and his face set in hard, inscrutable lines, was pouring himself a generous glass of whiskey.

“Looks like you’d got him, Jim,” he said harshly, his eyes glittering.  “And it looks like I’d got you.  Where I want you, by God!”

Galloway drank his whiskey and made no reply.  He was thinking, thinking fast.  His eyes were never still now, but roved from Rod Norton’s white face to the faces of Tom Cutter, Struve, and the other men gathering in the room.