"About an hour ago," the man interrupted her. "He fell just about where you dismounted, drilled through by a bullet hired by Saul Fulton and Tom Carr. I found him there—and brought him in."
"Do—do his people know?"
"Not yet. Only you and I know it—yet." Again the voice leaped tumultuously: "But soon his people are coming here—his people and mine. They are coming for my counsel, and, by God, it's ready for them!"
"And you'll tell them?"
"I'll tell them that I've come back from following after new gods. I'll tell them that the blood of my forefathers hasn't grown cold in me, and that if they follow me, tonight they will see 'Little' Jim avenged." He paused an instant before adding passionately, "Not by a single man or a couple, but with as many filthy lives as it takes to balance one decent life."
CHAPTER XXXIX
As Anne Masters stood in the narrow doorway of the room where lay the dead body of "Little" Jim Bartleton, she seemed to lose her hold on modernity and to stand a hostage to the forces and emotions of the mediaeval.
The fire rose and fell and flickered. It snapped and sighed, roared and whispered, and with it the shadow of the sheeted figure and silhouette of the uncovered face grew and lessened in grotesque fluctuation.
Before she could begin her struggle with the man whose face wore little promise of conversion, she must conquer the struggle in herself, for suddenly she had need to defend her own feelings against the currents of thought that swayed him, and the rôle of righteous avenger no longer seemed so indefensible.