Beside the girls was a quick movement, a man uttering one explosive word as though it gave vent to an emotion that had been pent deep in his heart for long and while the black storm clouds seemed to shut down and muffle every sound, even Bobby Cole's excited sobbing, Tom Beck cried twice:
"Jane!... Jane!"
Bobby, at that, turned from Jane to her father and the mistress of the HC faced her foreman. When she had first seen him she betrayed little except surprise; now she made one movement as though she would throw herself upon him but again the look in his face checked her.
"You came back to me, Tom," she said.
"Back," he answered.... "But I can't ever come back to ... you...."
It was the miserable self loathing, the shame in his heart, which spoke, and it was that which made her see him, not as the strong man he had been but as a broken, penitent, self denying individual ... denying himself the love that was in her eyes, mingled with the relief at his return and the joy of triumph which still thrilled her ... that love which he felt unworthy to claim because he had doubted it!
And then he changed. A movement sharp, decided, in the group, stiffened him.
"Hold up!" he cried. "Don't one of you move! Jimmy, take two men to the Gap. Hold everybody in this Hole until we can get the sheriff, this'll be a clean-up for—"
A blinding flare, a crash of thunder that tore sky and shook earth, broke in on him. There was a rending of tough timber as the bolt ripped down a cedar, a snorting of horses. And in that stunning instant Dick Hilton leaped from the group, vaulted to his saddle and lashing the horse frantically, made off.
A revolver cracked, a rifle crashed. Hilton disappeared into a deluge of huge drops that came from the low, scudding clouds. Others got to their horses and a fusillade of shots sounded like the ripping of strong cloth. And above it rang Jane Hunter's voice: