“But if he kills me——?” I faltered.
“What of that?”
“You.”
“I?” Her face filled. “I should not be long.”
She adjusted the revolver to a crevice a little removed from me—“They will be hunting you, not me,” she said—and crouched behind it, peering earnestly out, intent upon the hollow. And I edged farther, and farther, as if seeking for a mark, but with all my flesh a-prickle and my breath fast, like any man, I assert, who forces himself to invite the striking capabilities of a rattlesnake.
Abruptly it came—the strike, so venomous that it stung my face and scalded my eyes with the spatter of sandstone and hot lead; at the moment her Colt’s 298 bellowed into my ears, thunderous because even unexpected. I could not see; I only heard an utterance that was cheer and sob in one.
“I got him! Are you hurt? Are you hurt?”
“No. Hurrah!”
“Hurrah, dear.”
The air rocked with the shouts of the Sioux; shouts never before so welcome in their tidings, for they were shouts of rage and disappointment. They flooded my eyes with vigor, wiped away the daze of the bullet impact; the hollow leaped to the fore—upon its low parapet a dull shade where no shade should naturally be, and garnished with crimson.