"You might as well come out," it called. "We're going to fire the plant."
Harris stretched prone on the floor and rested the muzzle of his rifle on a crack between the logs. It was hard shooting. He was forced to shift the butt end of the gun, moving with it himself to line the sights instead of swinging the free end of the barrel. He trained it on a crack some two feet from the door of the shop. Behind the aperture the light of a window on the far side showed faintly.
"Come out!" the voice ordered. "Or we'll cook you inside. We've no time to lose. Rush it!"
The light disappeared from the crack and Harris pressed the trigger. With the roar of his gun a shape pitched down across the door of the shop. Some unseen hands caught the man by the feet and as he was dragged back from sight Harris saw the red handkerchief which had served as a mask.
From all along the row of buildings a fire was opened on the bunk house. Apparently one man was detailed to search out a certain crevice between the logs. Harris threw himself flat against the lower log which barely shielded him. One rifleman covered a crack breast-high, another the one next below, drilling it at six-inch intervals. Shreds of 'dobe chinking littered the room. The balls which found an entrance splintered through the bunks and buried themselves in the logs of the far wall. A third marksman worked on the lower crack. Puffs of 'dobe pulverized before Harris's eyes as the systematic fire crept toward him down the crack in six-inch steps.
A flash of dust a few inches before his nose half blinded him. The next shot drilled through an inch above his head, flattened sidewise on the floor, and a fragment of shell-jacket, stripped in passing through, scored his cheek and nicked his ear. The next fanned his shirt across the shoulders and the biting scraps of 'dobe stung his back.
The shooting suddenly ceased. Billie Warren, dazedly indifferent as to what should happen to the Three Bar since the wreck of the lower field, had roused to action the instant she saw the spurts of chinking fly from the cracks of the bunk house before the fusillade sent after Harris. She threw open the door and stepped out, holding up one hand.
"Don't kill him!" she commanded. "If you fire another shot at him I'll put up every dollar I own to hang every man that ever rode a foot with Lang! Do you hear that, Lang?"
"Lang's in Idaho," a voice growled surlily from the shop. "None of us ever rode with Lang. We're from every brand on the range—and we're going to burn you squatters out."
"Draw off and let us ride away," she said. "You can have the Three Bar."