The bull stood still, watching them. And in the black soul of Evered an awful triumph leaped and screamed. His ash stave was beside him, his revolver was beneath his hand. There was time and to spare.
He flung one fist high and brought it smashing down. It struck a rock before him and crushed skin and knuckles till the blood burst forth. But Evered did not even know. There was a dreadful exultation in him.
He saw the bull’s head drop, saw the vast red bulk lunge forward, quick as light; saw Semler dodge like a rabbit, and run, shrieking, screaming like a woman; saw Mary Evered stand proudly still as still.
In the last moment Evered flung himself on the ground; he hid his face in his arms. And the world rocked and reeled round him so that his very soul was shaken.
Face in his arms there, the man began presently to weep like a little child.
VI
AFTER an interval, which seemed like a very long time, but was really only a matter of seconds, Evered got to his feet, and with eyes half averted started down the knoll toward the spring.
Yet even with averted eyes he was able to see what lay before him; and a certain awed wonder fell upon the man, so that he was shaken, and stopped for a moment still. And there were tremorous movements about his mouth when he went on.
His wife’s body lay where it had been flung by the first blunt blow of the red bull’s awful head. But—this was the wonder of it—the red bull had not trampled her. The beast stood above the woman’s body now, still and steady; and Evered was able to see that there was no more murder in him. He had charged the woman blindly; but it was now as though, having struck her, he knew who she was and was sorrowing. It was easy to imagine an almost human dejection in the posture of the huge beast.
And it was this which startled and awed Evered; for the bull had always been, to his eyes, an evil and a murderous force.