With a cry she threw herself beside Jud's rigid figure.
"He is dead! Jud! Jud!" she wailed. "Don't look like that!"
Crawley raised himself from the ground, bewildered and dumb. To his brain came the knowledge that he had killed a man. Terror supplanted fury in his closing eyes, a pallor crept over his swarthy face. For the first time he looked into the wide eyes in the strangled face. He did not hear the cries of the woman; he heard only the gasping of that throttled man as they had plunged to the ground.
"I hope I haven't—haven't killed him," struggled through his bleeding lips, tremulously. "He's dead!" Like a hunted beast he looked about for some place in which to hide, for some way to escape. "They'll hang me! They'll lynch me!" He leaped to his feet and with a yell turned to plunge across the fields toward the woods.
But the reaction had come upon him. His strength was gone. His knees gave way beneath him and he dropped helplessly to the ground, his eyes again falling upon the face of his victim. Trembling in every nerve, he tried to look away, but could not.
Suddenly he started as if struck from behind. His intense eyes had seen a quiver on Jud's lips, a convulsive twitching of the jaws; his ears caught the sound of a small, choking gasp. The world cleared for him. Jud was not dead!
"He's alive!" burst from his lips. He flung the convulsed form of the girl from the breast of the man who was struggling back to life.
As he raised the prostrate man's head, overjoyed to see the blackness receding, to hear the gasp now grow louder and faster, a heavy body struck him and something like a steel trap tightened on his neck. Writhing backward he found the infuriated face of the girl close to his. Her hands were upon his throat.
"You killed him and I'll kill you!" she hissed in his ear, and he knew she was mad! It was but a short struggle; he overpowered her and held her to the ground. She looked up at him with such a malevolent glare that he cowered and shivered. Those tender eyes of Justine Van!
"He ain't dead!" he gasped. "Be quiet, Justine! For God's sake, be quiet! Look! Don't you see he's alive? I'll help you bring him to—I won't tech him again! Be quiet an' we'll have him aroun' all right in a minute! Lookee! He's got his eyes closed! I'll git some water!"