A smoke-spurt met him as he reeled around the corner nearest him, and his knees sagged as he aimed his gun at a blurring figure in front of him. He saw the man go down, but his own strength was spent, and he knew the last bullet had struck him in a vital spot.
Staggering drunkenly, he started for the side of the house and brought up against it with a crash. Again, as he had done inside the house, he stretched his arms out, flattening himself against the wall, but this time the arms were hanging more limply.
He was seeing things through a crimson haze, and raising a hand, he wiped his eyes—and could see better, though there was a queer dimness in his vision and the world was still traveling in eccentric circles.
He saw a blur in front of him—two men, he thought, though he knew he had accounted for two of the three gunmen who had followed him to the house. Then he heard a laugh—coarse and brutal—in a voice that he knew—Carrington’s.
With heartbreaking effort he brought up his right hand, bearing the pistol. He was trying to swing it around to bring it to bear upon one of the two dancing figures in front of him, when a crushing blow landed on his head, and he knew one of the men had struck him with a fist. He felt his own weapon go off at last—it seemed he had been an age pressing on the trigger—and he heard a voice again—Carrington’s—saying: “Damn him; he’s shot me!” He laughed aloud as a gun roared close to him; he felt another twinge of pain somewhere around where the other twinges had come—or on the other side—he did not know; and he sank slowly, still pressing the trigger of his pistol, though not knowing whether or not he was doing any damage. And then the eccentrically whirling world became a black blur, soundless and void.
CHAPTER XXI—A MAN FACES DEATH
Taylor’s last shot, when he had been automatically pressing the trigger after Carrington had struck him viciously with his fist, had brought down the last of the three men who had ambushed him. And one of his last bullets had struck Carrington, who had recovered consciousness and staggered out of the house in time to see the end of the fight. And the big man, in a black, malignant fury of hatred, was staggering toward Taylor, lifting a foot to kick him, when from the direction of the clearing in front of the house came a voice, hoarse and vibrant with a cold, deadly rage:
“One kick an’ I blow the top of your head off!” Carrington stopped short and wheeled, to face Ben Mullarky.
The Irishman’s eyes were blazing with wrath, and as he came forward, peering at the figures lying on the ground near the house, Carrington retreated, holding up his hands.
“Three of ye pilin’ on one, eh?” said Mullarky as he looked down at Taylor, huddled against the side of the house. “An’ ye got him, too, didn’t ye? I’ve a domn big notion to blow the top of your head off, anny way. Ye slope, ye big limb of the divvle, or I’ll do it!”