Page:Saga of Billy the Kid.djvu/140

over door and lintels from top to bottom. On the sills of the windows he spread shavings and saturated them with oil. Over the window shutters and every piece of woodwork he threw cupfuls of the inflammable liquid until his can was empty.

"I have given you my orders, Mr. McSween." Colonel Dudley's voice had in it the ring of finality. "See that they are obeyed. Stop your fighting or suffer the consequences."

The colonel turned to his bugler with a sharp command.

"Now, strike your matches and touch her off," said Jimmy Dolan.

The staccato notes of the bugle sounded in the street. "Forward!" sang the trumpet. There was a rattle of arms as the troopers straightened to attention and dressed their ranks. The column got slowly under way.

The oil-drenched pile exploded into a mass of fire that shot up to the roof. As Dolan and his companions sprang down the embankment into the bottom-lands, a thin veil of blue-white fire was rippling and shimmering over door and window shutters. Fiery little tongues were curling eagerly about the woodwork as if relishing appetizing food. Slender red streamers that flashed to the shingles of the roof waved and fluttered like pennons of victory.

Clatter of accoutrements, pounding of hoofs, creaking of gun carriages, grew faint in the distance, fainter still, and ceased. Whitish smoke, soft, billowy, rose from the roof of the McSween home and drifted in a lurid mist into the empty street.

No sooner had the cavalry column got in motion than McSween and his group of home-defenders hurried back inside the house.

"Old Dudley made it plain as daylight that we must