I wish you would, Wade. It’d be a load off my mind.”

“Thanks, chief,” replied Wade with emotion, as he pressed the outlaw’s hand resting on his bed. “But no. I won’t do it. . . . Not while you’re alive!”

“Aw, I’m sorry. I was afraid you wouldn’t,” replied the chief, gloomily. “But Wade—if I should be—”

He broke off huskily. His dark face looked haggard in the dim firelight and his big eyes burned.

“Simm, is there any hope that you might do—what you ask me—after this big job?”

“Gawd no! That’s too late, even if I wanted to. But for you, boy. . .”

“All right, Simm. If they get you—and not me—I promise.”

Mercer was a good-sized town in central Texas, having one long main street, the middle block of which consisted of the important stores and saloons. Opposite the hotel on the corner stood the Mercer bank building, a new structure more imposing than the modest edifices that neighbored it.

The noon hour of this particular spring day appeared to be less affected than usual by the lazy siesta-loving habit of Texans, for there were pedestrians on the sidewalks and vehicles moving along between.

Four horsemen, riding close together, turned out of a side street a block down from the hotel almost precisely at the same moment that seven other riders appeared from an opposite direction. They trotted their horses toward each other.

“Boss, I shore don’t like the way them people air fadin’ off the street,” observed Arkansas.

“ ’Pears like Tex is leadin’ his gang a little fast,” added Pony Heston.

The four horsemen had reached a point almost opposite the hotel, diagonally across from which frowned the stone-faced bank, when Wade Holden seized Bell’s arm and hissed:

“Hold, chief! I saw sunshine glint on a rifle barrel in that open window above the bank!”

“I seen it, boss,” corroborated Arkansas, coolly. “We’re ambushed.”

“Blue! . . . Damn his treacherous soul!” growled Bell.

Wade’s keen gaze roved swiftly everywhere.

“Boss, make a break—quick!” advised Arkansas, sharply.

“But which way?” rasped Bell, wise too late.

Wade saw a man in his shirt sleeves appear at an open door. He was not a ranger, but probably a citizen too excited to wait for orders. He raised a rifle and fired. Wade heard the sickening thud of the bullet striking flesh. Bell was knocked clean out of his saddle. Arkansas snatched at the bridle of the rearing horse.

Swift as a flash Holden dropped out of his saddle. He leveled his gun at the fellow who was again aiming the rifle, froze with deadly precision and fired. That man pitched up an exploding rifle and fell out in the street. Other shots rang out with the pounding of hoofs. Bell was getting to his feet.

“Rustle, Wade,” shouted Arkansas.