It was Broome’s voice, malignant and thick.
“You’re goin’ git what ’s comin’ to you this time,” he added, tauntingly.
There was no mistaking the menace of the group; Gard realized, as he surveyed it, that this was no posse, but a band of drunken cowboys ripe for any mischief. At all hazards, he must keep them from the house.
“Ride the murderer down!” someone roared, drunkenly. But none of the men moved nearer to attack the motionless figure on the door stone.
Gard was thinking fast, and the burden of his thought was the girl shivering on the other side of the door. He must get these men away. She must not know.
Deliberately he stepped back into the room. As the door closed behind him a bullet buried itself in the upper panel with a savage “ping!” amid a chorus of savage yells. Helen was at the window, ears and eyes strained to the scene without. She came toward him, swiftly.
“You must not go out there!” she cried. “Those men are not officers; they mean harm!”
Her hand touched his arm lightly in terrified appeal. The white womanliness of her upturned face made his heart ache with tenderness. His soul thrilled to a trembling sense of the sweet possibilities of life. Then the instinct of the protector awoke.
“I must go,” he said, speaking low and fast. “I must go now; I must meet these men and—and have it out with them. It is the only way. But I’m coming back. Don’t you worry. I’m coming back clear and clean—”
“Don’t go!” she whispered in terror; for he was moving toward a long French window that opened toward the cottonwoods.