The stallion thundered on; and the little jockey managed to cling to the saddle, though how he did it none of us could tell.  In the bottomland near the ranch he ran out of the deeper dusk into a band of the strange, luminous after-glow that follows erratically sunset in wide spaces.  Then we could see that he was not only holding his seat, but was trying to do something, just what we could not make out.  The reins were flying free, so there was no question of regaining control.

A shot flashed at him from the ranch; then a second; after which, as though at command, the firing ceased.  Probably the condition of affairs had been recognized.

All this we saw from a distance.  The immensity of the Arizona country, especially at dusk when the mountains withdraw behind their veils and mystery flows into the bottomlands, has always a panoramic quality that throws small any human-sized activities.  The ranch houses and their attendant trees look like toys; the bands of cattle and the men working them are as though viewed through the reverse lenses of a glass; and the very details of mesquite or sacatone flats, of alkali shallow or of oak grove are blended into broad washes of tone.  But now the distant, galloping horse with its swaying mannikin charging on the ranch seemed to fill our world.  The great forces of portent that hover aloof in the dusk of the desert stooped as with a rush of wings.  The peaceful, wide spaces and the veiled hills and the brooding skies were swept clear.  Crisis filled our souls:  crisis laid her hand on every living moving thing in the world, stopping it in its tracks so that the very infinities for a brief, weird period seemed poised over the running horse and the swaying, fumbling man.

At least that is the way it affected me; and subsequent talk leads me to believe that that it is how it affected every man jack of us.  We all had different ways of expressing it.  Windy Bill subsequently remarked:  “I felt like some old Injun He-God had just told me to crawl in my hole and give them that knew how a chanct.”

But I know we all stopped short, frozen in our tracks, and stared, and I don’t believe man, or horse, drew a deep breath.

Nearer and nearer the stallion drew to the ranch.  Now he was within a few yards.  In another moment he would crash head on, at tremendous speed, into the closed massive doors.  The rider seemed to have regained somewhat of his strength.  He was sitting straight in the saddle, was no longer clinging.  But apparently he was making no effort to regain control.  His head was bent and he was still fumbling at something.  The distance was too great for us to make out what, but that much we could see.

On flew the stallion at undiminished speed.  He was running blind; and seemingly nothing could save him from a crash.  But at almost the last moment the great doors swung back.  Those within had indeed realized the situation and were meeting it.  At the same instant Brower rose in his stirrups and brought his arm forward in a wide, free swing.  A blinding glare flashed across the world.  We felt the thud and heave of a tremendous explosion.  Dust obliterated everything.