There was no answer. Mrs. Archer reached out to steady herself against the table. Mary’s grip on the Colt tightened convulsively.
“Open up, I tell yuh,” repeated the voice. “I ain’t aimin’ to—hurt yuh.”
Then apparently a heavy shoulder thrust against the door, which shook and creaked ominously. Suddenly the girl’s slim figure straightened and she brought her weapon around in front of her, holding it with both hands. 299
“If—if you try to force that door, I—I’ll shoot,” she called out.
The only answer was an incredulous laugh, and an instant later the man’s shoulder struck the panels with a crash that cracked one of them and partly tore the bolt from its insecure fastenings.
Promptly the girl cocked her weapon, shut both eyes, and pulled the trigger. The recoil jerked the barrel up, and the bullet lodged in the ceiling. Before she could recover from the shock, there came another crash, the shattered door swung inward, and Tex Lynch sprang across the threshold.
Again Mary lifted the heavy weapon and tried to nerve herself to fire. But somehow this was different from shooting through a solid wooden door, and she could not bring herself to do it. Mrs. Archer had no such scruples. Her small, delicately-chiseled face was no longer soft and gentle. It had frozen into a white mask of horror, out of which the once-soft eyes blazed with fierce determination. Bending across the table, she leveled her toylike weapon at the advancing outlaw, and by the merest chance sent a bullet flying so close to his head that he ducked instinctively. An instant later Pedro darted through the passage from the kitchen, snatched the weapon from her hand, and flung her roughly into a chair.
Her aunt’s half-stifled cry stung Mary like a lash and roused her from the almost hypnotic state in 300 which, wide-eyed and terrified, she had been watching Lynch’s swift advance.
“Oh!” she cried furiously. “You—you beast!”
He was within a few feet of her now, and moved by the double impulse of fear and anger, her finger pressed the trigger. But there was no response, and too late the girl realized that she had failed to cock the weapon. In another moment Lynch had wrenched it from her hand.