"Look out, Bruce!"
Just those words, but the bell-like quality of the voice itself, the horror in its shrill tone carrying sharply to them, echoing and re-echoing down the gulch, struck a chill to the hearts of three men.
The words had not left Ann's lips before the automatic in Ned's hand leaped and flashed and the echo of the woman's warning cry was followed by the smashing reverberations of the shot. But her scream had availed; it had sent a tremor through Lytton's body even as he fired, and, as Bayard halted abruptly in the center of the open space without barrier before him or weapon with which to answer, absolutely at Lytton's mercy, his hat was torn from his left hand.
"You whelp!" Ned cried, and on the word took one more step forward, halted, dropped the weapon on its mark again and paused for the merest fraction of time. His muscles became plastic, as steady as stone under the strain of this crisis. He did not hear the quick step on the kitchen floor, he could not see Benny Lynch half fall through the doorway, but when the miner's gun, held stiffly out from his hip, roared and belched and remained steady, ready to shoot again, Ned lowered the weapon just a trifle.
A queer, strained grin came over his face and, standing erect, he turned his head stiffly, jerkily toward Benny who stood crouched and waiting. Then, very slowly, almost languidly, his gun hand lowered itself. When it was almost beside his thigh, the fingers opened and the pistol dropped with a light thud to the earth. Ned lifted the other hand to his chest and still grinning, as if a joke had been made at his expense which quite embarrassed him, he let his knees bend as though he would kneel. He did not follow out the movement. He wilted and fell. He tried to sit up, feebly, impotently. Then, he lay back with a quick sigh.
The other two men stood fixed for a moment. Then, with a cry, Bayard started up the slope at a run. He did not look again at Benny, did not know that the miner walked slowly forward to where Lytton had fallen. All he saw was the figure of a hatless woman, face covered with her hands, leaning against a great boulder twenty yards above the cabin, and he did not take his eyes from her during one step of the floundering run.
"Ann!" he called, as he drew near. "Ann!"
She turned with a quick, terrified movement and looked at him. He saw that her face was a mask, her eyes feverishly dry.
"He didn't—"
"No, Ann, he didn't," he answered, taking her hands in his, his voice unsteady. "Benny ... he fired last ... an' there'll be no more shootin'...."