Like so many wild beasts they clutched and struck, unable to disentangle themselves.

Enright, his face like chalk, got to his knees and crept across the floor until his hand closed on Westcott's revolver.

Lifting himself by a grip on the desk, he swung the weapon forward at the very instant the miner rose staggering, dragging Beaton with him.

There was a flash of flame, a sharp report, and Westcott sprang aside, gripping the back of a chair.

The gunman sank into shapelessness on the floor as the chair hurtled through the air straight at Enright's head.
With a crash the door fell, and a black mass of men surged in through the opening, the big bartender leading them, an axe in his hand.
Beaton lay motionless just as he had dropped; Enright was in one corner, dazed, unnerved, a red gash across his forehead, from which blood dripped, the revolver, struck from his fingers, yet smoking on the floor; Westcott, his clothes torn, his face bruised by blows, breathing heavily, went slowly backward, step by step, to the farther wall, conscious of nothing now but the savagely hostile faces of these new enemies.