“You’re taking it for granted that I’m unarmed, and you are right,” he flashed back. “I don’t care for your gun. You’ve laid the law down for me, and now I’ll lay a little of it down for you. Your inspectors will be welcome on the job anywhere and at any time, but as for yourself, you’ll stay away from it. If you show up in any camp of mine, you want to bring that gun along with you, for I shall take care to have one of my own, and I’ll use it!”
Lushing picked up the weapon and let it lie in his palm.
“Did the little Grillage tell you to kill me off out of the way?” he leered.
That was the final straw. David Vallory flung himself across the card-table in a mad-bull charge, carrying the table with him in his eagerness to close with his antagonist. For a few breathless seconds the battle was obstructed. David’s rush had borne Lushing backward, tilting the chair in which he was sitting until it brought up against the wall and was crushed under his weight and David’s and that of the overturned table. Too furious to fight coolly, David tried to snatch the wreck of the broken chair out of the way so that he could get at the man entangled in it and held down by the tipped table. One good punch he got in, or thought he did, and then there was a stunning crash, a fleeting whiff of powder smoke, and the light went out.
XX
In the Ore Shed
WHEN David came to his senses he found himself lying on bare ground in the dark. There seemed to be a weight like that of an elephant’s knee pressing upon his chest, and it was with the greatest difficulty that he could get his breath. Somewhere near at hand he could hear sounds as of a woman sobbing. Next he realized vaguely that his boots had been taken off. Groping aimlessly in the dark, his hand found the woman. She was kneeling beside him, and at his touch the sobs became a choking cry.
“Davie, dear; is it yourself that’s alive?” The voice seemed to come from an immense distance, but he heard it and recognized it.
“You, Judith?”—then, jerkily: “What’s—happened—to me?”
“’Tis killed dead you are!” she whimpered.
“Nothing like it.” The words were coming a bit easier now and he did not have to stop and gasp between each pair of them. Also, he was beginning to remember some of the events precedent. “Did—did the house fall down on me?” he asked.