driver and the two guns under his elbows. They stopped to discuss him in speculative wonder, watching him as he drove slowly along looking for a space between horses and wagons to accommodate his lengthy outfit.
There was space in front of the Railroad Restaurant, the place conducted by Eddie Kane's more or less estimable mother-in-law, a family tie of which Simpson was wholly unaware. He was firmly fixed on steak and potatoes, and that joint looked about as good as any. There he drew up along the edge of the sidewalk with his cumbersome wagon, ponderously, like a steamboat making its berth, and as he threw his leg over the side to get down and hitch, the lumberman and the city marshal popped suddenly around the corner of the calaboose and began to shoot.
It was no time for argument, or consideration of legal aspects of his situation; it was the pinch between life and death. Simpson grabbed the rifle from the seat beside him, the bullets of the pair slapping the planks of the restaurant's high false front. He heard somebody squeal inside the place, the front door slam violently, as he cut loose.
The two men were diagonally across the broad street, about two hundred feet away. At Simpson's first shot the city marshal dropped in his tracks, and went rolling a little way as if he had fallen on a hillside. The lumberman ran behind the calaboose when his companion fell, and the gust of shooting ended as suddenly as it had begun.
