A chair crashed wildly. Durand fired again and yet again, his nerves giving way to a panic that carried him to swift action. He could not have stood another moment without screaming.
There came the faint sound of a hand groping on the wall and immediately after a flood of light filled the room.
Clay stood by the door. His revolver covered the crouching gang leader. His eyes were hard and pitiless.
"Try another shot," he advised ironically.
Jerry did. A harmless click was all the result he got. He knew now that the cowman had tempted him to waste his last shots at a bit of furniture flung across the room.
"You'll tell me what you did with Kitty Mason," said Clay in his low, persuasive voice, just as though there had been no intermission of flying bullets since he had mentioned the girl before.
"You can't kill me, when I haven't a loaded gun," Durand answered between dry lips.
The other man nodded an admission of the point. "That's an advantage you've got of me. You could kill me if I didn't have a gun, because you're a yellow wolf. But I can't kill you. That's right. But I can beat hell out of you, and I'm sure goin' to do it."
"Talk's cheap, when you've got a loaded six-gun in your fist," jeered
Jerry.
With a flirt of his hand Clay tossed the revolver to the top of a book-case, out of easy reach of a man standing on the floor. He ripped open the buttons of his overcoat and slipped out of it, then moved forward with elastic step.