“Now will you go back to your room?” angrily shouted Camp, although he was not three feet from her.
“Why are they firing at the hotel?” was Emily’s reply.
“Bad aim—that’s all. The strikers aren’t here. That must have been an answer to a bullet from next door. The soldiers shoot whenever a striker shows himself to aim.”
Crack! There was a howl of derision in reply. “That’s the way they let the soldiers know it was a close shot but a miss,” said Camp.
A man ran from behind a building to the right and in front of the stockade, and started across the open toward where the strikers were entrenched. He was a big, rough-looking fellow. As he came, Emily could see his face—dark, scowling, set.
Crack!
The man ran more swiftly. There was a howl of delight from the strikers. But, a few more leaps and he stumbled, flung up his hands, pitched forward, fell, squirmed over so that he lay face upward. His legs and arms were drawing convulsively up against his body and shooting out to their full length again. His face was twisting and grew shiny with sweat and froth. A stream of blood oozed from under him and crawled in a thin, dark rivulet across the flagging to a crack, then went no further. He turned his face, a wild appeal for help in it, toward the house whence he had come.
At once from behind that shelter ran a second man, younger than the first. He had a revolver in his right hand. Emily could plainly see his clinched jaws, his features distorted with fury. His lips were drawn back from his teeth like an angry bulldog’s.
“He’s a madman!” shrieked Camp. “He can do nothing!”
“He’s a hero,” panted Emily.