“They’ll shoot him,” Mary was saying, “oh, they’ll kill him!”
A surge of terror swept Janet. Next thing she knew she was out of the car and running down the hillside among the stones and the stalks of sagebrush, frantic to reach him, to pull him out of view of the men beneath. Only a single one of them had to cast a glance upward and to raise his gun and fire, then he would die. He should not die! She should fling herself as a protection before him rather than that he should be slain!
On a sudden a hand reached up from a rock and seized her arm, stopping her with a jerk. Then she was roughly pulled down beside it. The man was Madden, the sheriff.
“What in hell are you doing?” he demanded harshly. “Have you gone crazy?”
His grip was not relinquished.
“But see him! Aren’t you men going to help him? Are you going to let him be killed?”
Madden forced her to her knees, so that she was sheltered by the outcrop of stone.
“Any man who can smoke a cigar like that at such a time as this knows just what he’s doing,” was the answer. “Keep quiet and watch.”
“Oh, I don’t want to see,” she said. But she continued to look with fascinated eyes at the lone, calm figure on the dam.
Presently Madden pushed his gun forward over the rock.