Lefty Wister's automatic poured a stream of fire at the vague shadow of the wolf. Nelson saw Tark dodge with inhuman swiftness an instant before the other fired, then saw the wolf at the Cockney's throat.
He heard Lefty's bubbling, horrible scream as he triggered his own pistol at the dim shapes rushing upon him.
He saw the blazing, awful eyes of a striped beast leaping toward him from the right. An upraised giant paw eclipsed everything as he tried to swing his gun around in time.
Then Nelson saw nothing.
Chapter IX
JUDGMENT OF THE GUARDIAN
"The man stirs, mistress! I told you that he was but stunned."
Nelson heard that queer voice inside his mind, as he floated through infinities of aching darkness.
"Tark, it might be better for him if he had died out there in the forest!"
It seemed to Nelson that time had doubled back upon itself and that he lay again in the squalid inn in Yen Shi as he had lain that night he had first heard the thought-voices in his dreams.