Boyle leaned against the torrent of abuse and swallowed it, his face losing its fiery hue, blanching and fading as if every word fell on his senses like the blow of a whip to the back. The Governor’s son watched every muscle of Shanklin’s face as if to read the gambler’s intention in his eye, while his hand, stiff-set and clawlike, hovered within three inches of his pistol-butt.
Presently Shanklin stopped, panting like a lizard. Both men stooped a little lower, leaning forward in their eager watchfulness. Neither of them seemed to be conscious that the world held any other object than his enemy, crouching, waiting, drawing breath in nostril-dilating gasps.
Boyle moved one foot slightly, as if to steady himself for a supreme effort. A little stone which he dislodged tumbled down the side of a four-inch gully with a noise that seemed the sound of an avalanche. With that alarm Shanklin’s arm moved swiftly. Like a reflection in a glass, Boyle’s arm moved with it.
Two shots; such a bare margin between them that the ear scarcely could mark the line. Then one.
Shanklin, his hands half lifted, his arms crooked at the elbow and extended from his sides, dropped his pistol, his mouth open, as if to utter the surprise which was pictured in his features. He doubled limply at the knees, collapsed forward, fell upon his face. 311
Boyle put his hand to his breast above his heart, pressing it hard; took it away, turned about in his tracks as if bewildered; swayed sickly, sank to his knees, and fell over to his side with the silent, hopeless, huddling movement of a wild creature that has been shot in the woods.
Ten-Gallon came from behind the tent, where he had been compressing himself into a crevice between two boulders. His face was white, and down it sweat was pouring, drawn from the agony of his base soul. He went to the place where Dr. Slavens knelt beside Boyle.
“Cra-zy Christmas!” gasped he, his mouth falling open. Then again:
“Cra-zy Christmas!”
Slavens had gone to Boyle first, because there was something in the utter collapse of Shanklin which told him the man was dead. As he stripped Boyle’s clothing off to bare the wound, Slavens ordered Ten-Gallon to go and see whether the old gambler had paid his last loss.