In this world there are savages who would have respected, for the time at least, her white grief. But this was the man who had tortured the miner and his peones; driven the latter naked through spiky cactus after he had cut the soles off their feet. She sprang up when he seized her, and as she fought bitterly, beating away his black, evil face with her little fists, his strident laughter mingled with her wild sobbing and carried to Bull behind the ridge.
For three days this man’s boast had rung in his brain: “We’ve killed your men, outraged your women!” But though anger blazed within him, his tone was icy cold. “Look after the others. I’ll ’tend to him!”
He had already pulled his rifle from the sling under his leg. Raising it now, he lined the sights, the same sights that had directed a ball through the brain of Livingstone’s horse. While Lee writhed and twisted in the Colorado’s arms, he dared not shoot. He waited until, at the double crack of his companions’ rifles, two of the other Colorados pitched headlong from their saddles. Then, as their leader paused to look and, with a swift wrench, Lee tore loose and let daylight between them, the rifle spoke, sent its bullet whistling through his brain.
“Keep after them!” Bull called back as he rode on over the ridge.
But already Jake and Sliver’s rifles were barking like hungry dogs. Trained to a hair in guerrilla warfare, the remaining Colorados had spurred their beasts behind the horse herd. At the first shot the band had stampeded, and now, urged on by the yells of the fugitives, who rode crouched on their horses’ necks, the scared animals coursed swiftly down the valley.
“The gall of them! Our horses!” Repeating his former observation, Sliver would have ridden after.
But Jake caught his bridle. His bleak eyes were scintillating like sunlit icicles. His lean, avid face quivered with subdued ferocity. “Don’t be a damn fool! They’re only using ’em for cover! We’ll shoot along this side of the ridge an’ catch ’em at the end of the valley!”
Meanwhile Bull rode on down the slope. After a surprised stare that showed her rescuers to be Americans, Lee had knelt again beside her father. As before said, Bull was no beauty. His black beard, bushy brows, hot red eyes, drink-blotched face, were of themselves sufficient to frighten a woman. Yet when she looked up sympathy illumined his countenance till it shone in her distressed sight as a clear lamp radiating human feeling. Without fear or doubt she turned to him for help.
“It’s my father! I’m afraid—Can’t you do something?”
So far Carleton had lain with his eyes closed. Now he opened them and spoke in detached whispers as Bull knelt by his side. “You’re—American. I told her not to follow. Don’t bother—with me. I’m shot—through lungs and stomach—bleeding inside. Get Lee—back to the house.”