The cars coursed to the curve, and turned parallel, facing the tracks. The angry glare of four searchlights burned against the black figures huddled above the stalled train.
The startled crowd eddied together, then scattered in headlong panic. Gunfire thunder and pelting lead poured from the rows of rifles toward the fleeing bodies.
Jim sprang out, crouched beside the searchlight, blazed away. He ran forward, stumbling against a pungently resinous stump. He rested his rifle on it to aim. Crack! The clumsy figure halted, raised wild arms grotesquely, fell spinning toward him. He caught up with the foremost guards, and stood with them for a volley across the narrow railroad gulch.
"Come on," boomed Huggins, the deputy sheriff in charge, running to the top of the cut.
Jim followed.
A wounded miner on the left trembled to his knees; his pistol aimed uncertainly at the man ahead. Jim's automatic plupped; the man's face butted against the rocky ground.
"Hey, there," Huggins bellowed, "Whatcher stop for?"
"We're goin' on," a gunman below shouted back. "We're goin' on, I say."
"Go on, then," he replied, disgustedly.
"Don'cher hear him, Ed?" to the engineer. "Go on, he says."