“Did you look through the barrel?” asked Nancy, slightly more experienced with firearms than Billie. She seized the rifle and held it up before a lamp that Alberdina had set in a corner of the gallery, cocked it and looked through with one eye professionally squinted.
“Why, it is loaded,” she announced. “It only has two empty what do you call them—chambers?”
“Must I shoot at somebody?” asked Billie.
“You could try and I could try,” answered Nancy, “but I don’t think either one of us would hit an elephant.”
Just then Miss Campbell put out the light. At the same moment the axe made a breach in the door and a man crawled through. Billie lifted the rifle and, taking a long breath, aimed at his foot. The man was looking about him in a bewildered way. It was the innkeeper, second leader of the gang. Billie pulled and pulled, but nothing happened, and in another moment a dozen mountaineers had crawled through the opening. The one lamp cast a small circle of light near the fire-place. The rest of the room was in darkness. In the gallery the anxious watchers were invisible to the band of men, but the watchers themselves could see the outlaws plainly now gathered in a group in the center of the room, rather uneasy after breaking down the door of Sunrise Camp.
“Ladies, I’d advise you to give up the prisoners,” called Lupo, addressing the darkness. “We ain’t goner touch none of you, but we wants them two furriners right away.”
“Git some torches,” ordered the innkeeper, who seemed really to be the boldest man in the lot.
Several men disappeared and in a moment returned with pitch torches which cast a lurid, flickering light through the room. It was a weird scene, looking down from the gallery. All of the men wore masks except Lupo and the innkeeper, who were boldly undisguised. They peered about the room. Suddenly Lupo’s eye caught a corner of the staircase at the far end.
“They’re upstairs. Come on, men,” he called.
Billie raised the shotgun to her shoulder.