[Illustration:  THE MAN’S FIGURE DISAPPEARED THROUGH THE OPENING, THE BUCKET FALLING FROM HIS HANDS]

“Now they know what kind o’ shootin’ t’ expect when they come out,” said Mart.

So Whitey knew why Mart alone had fired.  It was to add to the fears of the sheepmen—­if that could be done.  Anyway, no other man appeared at the opening in the roof.

Whitey watched the flames creep up and down the roof, growing higher as they stole along.  He saw them flicker over the eaves, lap the walls of the house, and finally clasp it like a red, flaring robe.  But Whitey did not think of the fire in those terms, but as a thing of horror, of death.

You, who have followed the adventures of Whitey, know that he had been in situations in which he was threatened with death.  But then he had been upheld by excitement; by the necessity of protecting himself.  And he had even faced death, but then he had come on it unexpectedly, in the case of the hanging train robbers.  This was a different matter; waiting to see men burned out and shot down.  And it is small wonder that Whitey’s nerves quivered, that the burning house began to dance before his eyes, and that he buried his face in his arms, to shut out the sight.

It is unlikely that Walt Lampson had thought of Whitey, until he chanced to see this action.  Then he spoke, and not unkindly.

“You’d better get back there behind the hill, kid,” Walt said.  “This ain’t no place for you.”

And so Whitey rose, and returned to where Monty was tethered, and he was not ashamed of the fact that he stumbled as he walked.  But Injun still crouched out behind the boulder.  There was no quivering of his nerves.  The only fear he might have had was that if he returned he would be sent to the rear; and he was too wily to take a chance.  So most of what followed was seen by Injun, and heard about by Whitey.

There came the time when the surviving sheepmen could no longer remain in the house.  Like a wise leader, Donald Spellman divided his forces, and ten crouching figures emerged from the front of the house, and ten from the back, and were outlined against the flames, as they scurried away.  How they were harried and followed and shot down would not make pleasant reading, and what happened to those who were captured it is not necessary to write, as you will remember what the cattlemen had sworn to do at their meeting.

After this, if there had been any who doubted Mart Cooley’s skill as a gunman, they doubted no longer.  And it was the misfortune of Donald Spellman to come under Mart’s aim.  Or perhaps it was his good fortune to be mortally wounded by a bullet, instead of ending his life as did the captives.  But Spellman had something to say before he died, and he said it to Walt Lampson.

“You got us,” he gasped, “an’ you got us right.  An’ I only got one thing to tell you, an’ to tell you quick.  I didn’t plan that cattle stampede.  It was a dirty trick.”