things, but he was pushed for time and thought they'd better go. It would only take a minute, the liveryman said, going off to rummage around for the coat. Coburn sent Simpson out with the two horses to wait in the dark beside the barn along with the three cowboys, who were already in the saddle, all set to go.
There was a dim light in the broad barn door, coming from a lantern in the office; beyond it black night and the rain, and the three cowboys around the corner of the building waiting for the boss to come.
As Simpson crossed this little dim beam from the office window and hit the cool damp air outside, somebody across the street took a shot at him. The bullet slapped hard against the planks, pretty close to his head. Others rattled after it as Simpson crouched between the horses and ran along the front of the barn toward the corner where the cowboys waited.
A bullet struck the steel horn of the saddle on his right, glancing with a mean whang so close to the animal's ears that it lost its nerve and attempted to bolt. In a moment the other horse was involved in the stampede, giving Simpson all he could do to hold them. He was whirled and twisted until he didn't know horse from horse in the dark, in peril of being trampled as well as shot.
Coburn burst out of a side door, which was a man door and not a horse door, just as his men, burning under the imposition, began to give the shooting crowd back the same hot brand of lead they were delivering. The boss jumped into the tangle of horses and Simpson, yelling unheard, or at least unheeded, orders to his men to stop shooting and go. Simpson hopped what he took to be
