[CHAPTER XXIII.]
A DETECTIVE IN A BAD FIX.
Detective Hook flung his hand behind him.
Instantly a revolver, grasped firmly between his fingers, glittered in the rays of the hanging lamp which shed its feeble light through the hall of the Cherry street tenement in which he now stood at bay.
"Stand off, there, you fellows!" he shouted, sternly. "One step forward and some one bites the dust!"
Crack!
The warning was unheeded.
In the wild western towns the rule is, "Shoot first and explanations afterward."
With fatal result Caleb Hook had chosen the course in direct reverse of this.