A derisive laugh followed, and when Grant turned a little Breckenridge saw his face. The bronze in it had faded, and left paler patches, that seemed almost grey, while the lad, who knew his comrade’s pride and uprightness, fancied he could guess how that taunt, made openly, had wounded him.
“Well,” he said, very slowly, “I can only hope you will have more confidence in your next leader; but I am on the list of the executive still, and if the house was full of dollars I wouldn’t give you one of them with which to make trouble that you’ll most surely be sorry for. Any way, those I had are safe in a place where, while your committee keep their heads, you will not lay hands on them.”
A shout of disbelief was followed by uproar, through which there broke detached cries: “Pull him down! He has them all the time! Pound them out of him! Burn the place down for a warning to the cattle-men!”
They died away when one of the men, with emphatic gestures, demanded attention. Moving out from the rest, he turned to Grant. “You have rifles and cartridges here, and after all, those are what we want the most. Now—and it’s your last chance—hand them out.”
“No,” said Grant.
The man made a little gesture of resignation. “Boys,” he said, “you will have to go in and take them.”
Grant still stood motionless and unyielding on his threshold, but he had only a moment’s grace, for the men outside surged on again, and one swung a rifle-butt over him. Breckenridge saw his comrade seize it, and had sprung to his side when a rifle flashed on the stairway behind him and a man cried out and fell. The next instant another rifle-butt whirled, and Grant, reeling sideways, went down and was trampled on.
Breckenridge ran towards the rifle still lying in the hall, but before he could reach it there was a roar of voices and a rush of feet, and the men who poured in headlong were upon him. Something hard and heavy smote him in the face, and as he reeled back gasping there was another flash on the stairway. His head struck something, and he was never sure of what happened during the next half-hour.
When, feeling very dizzy, Breckenridge raised himself in the corner where he had been lying, the hall was empty save for two huddled figures in the doorway, and while he blinked at them in a half-dazed fashion, it seemed to him that a red glare, which rose and fell, shone in. He could also smell burning wood, and saw dim wreaths of smoke drive by outside. His hearing was not especially acute just then, but he fancied that men were trampling, and apparently dragging furniture about, all over the building. Then, as his scattered senses came back to him, he rose feebly to his feet, and finding to his astonishment that he still possessed the power of locomotion, walked unevenly towards the motionless objects in the doorway. One of them, as he expected, was Grant, who was lying very white and still, just as he had fallen.
“Larry,” Breckenridge said, and shivered at the sound of his own voice. “Larry!”