The laughter stopped. He knew her name. He was trying to trick her, to make his voice sound like Sam’s.
Her voice was thick with strangled laughter. “Can’t come in. Can’t get in. Barred, hairpin.”
“Lizzie!”
“Say, ‘señora.’ Go away. Man come back.”
“Lizzie!” There was an impact of determined muscle against wood, the door-jamb splintering. A stifled scream rose toward the desert stars. The door fell in. A different sound split the air; another cry in a deeper key, and a man’s body fell across her knees. Some bottles crashed to the floor. There was a swift odor of spilled ammonia, of valerian.
Something was burning again! Rice. Burning on her knees. She couldn’t shake it off. Why didn’t some one come and take off this dead Indian? He hadn’t got her scalp. It made her laugh—hush, she must call. She fell to screaming; low terrible cries, thick and muffled, coming through her twitching and twisted mouth.
She was sitting there the next morning when they found her, the body of Sam Parrish shot to the heart, lying at her feet. Her empty gun lay on her knees; her finger at the trigger. Her eyes stared into the willows. They thought her dead until they touched her. Then she screamed!
They carried her out of the valley the next day, still screaming.
CHAPTER XXXV
A GLIMPSE OF FREEDOM
THE siding was deserted. The Palmyra had run out to Tucson, carrying Marshall and Claudia with her tender-hued, baby-smelling wools. Of that little party, Tony made perhaps the larger gap, Tony with his diamond blazing on his finger, his “holdouts,” left-overs from the Marshall table, and his case of smuggled triple X whisky. The young fellows encouraged his stories of old San Francisco, of Bliss and his yellow tips, of wonderful dinners, of the Bush Street Theater when McCullough and Barrett were there. Ah, those the only days! A forefinger would flank Tony’s wicked eye.