“Looks like business this time!” exclaimed Larry. “Spread out now and the first head that sticks over the balustrade gets a dose of hickory.”
When twenty-five yards from the terrace the advancing party divided, half halting between us and the water-tower and the remainder swinging around the house toward the front entrance.
“Ah, look at that!” yelled Larry. “It’s a battering-ram they have. O man of peace! have I your Majesty’s consent to try the elephant guns now?”
Morgan and the sheriff carried between them a stick of timber from which the branches had been cut, and, with a third man to help, they ran it up the steps and against the door with a crash that came booming back through the house.
Bates was already bounding up the front stairway, a revolver in his hand and a look of supreme rage on his face. Leaving Stoddard and Larry to watch the library windows, I was after him, and we clattered over the loose boards in the upper hall and into a great unfinished chamber immediately over the entrance. Bates had the window up when I reached him and was well out upon the coping, yelling a warning to the men below.
He had his revolver up to shoot, and when I caught his arm he turned to me with a look of anger and indignation I had never expected to see on his colorless, mask-like face.
“My God, sir! That door was his pride, sir,—it came from a famous house in England, and they’re wrecking it, sir, as though it were common pine.”
He tore himself free of my grasp as the besiegers again launched their battering-ram against the door with a frightful crash, and his revolver cracked smartly thrice, as he bent far out with one hand clinging to the window frame.
His shots were a signal for a sharp reply from one of the men below, and I felt Bates start, and pulled him in, the blood streaming from his face.
“It’s all right, sir,—all right,—only a cut across my cheek, sir,”—and another bullet smashed through the glass, spurting plaster dust from the wall. A fierce onslaught below caused a tremendous crash to echo through the house, and I heard firing on the opposite side, where the enemy’s reserve was waiting.