Clinging to consciousness with a grip that not even the blood loss could break, Smith saw Williams spring to his feet and give the alarm; saw three or four of the sheriff's men drop their weapons and hurl themselves upon another man who was trying to make his way unnoticed to the stagings with a box of dynamite on his shoulder. Then he felt the foolish smile coming again when he looked up at Starbuck.
"Don't let them hurt him, Billy; him nor Simms nor Lanterby, nor that other one—the short-hand man—I—I can't remember his name. They're just poor tools; and we've got to—to fight without hating, and—and—" foolish witlessness was enveloping him again like a clinging garment and he made a masterful effort to throw it off. "Tell the little girl—tell her—you know what to tell her, Billy; about what I tried to do. Harding said I'd get killed, but I remembered what she said, and I didn't care. Tell her I said that that one minute was worth living for—worth all it cost."
The raucous blast of a freak auto horn ripped into the growling murmur of the gate machinery, and a dust-covered car pulled up in front of the commissary. Out of it sprang first the doctor with his instrument bag, and, closely following him, two plain-clothes men and a Brewster police captain in uniform. Smith looked up and understood.
"Catch him! catch him!" he shrilled. "It's Boogerfield, and he's going to dy-dynamite the dam!"
"They're just—a little—too late, Billy, don't you think?" he quavered weakly. "I guess—I guess I've fooled them, after all." And therewith he closed his eyes wearily upon all his troubles and triumphings.