“I have written a note, too,” Farley said by way of reply. “It is for her.”
With slow, steady fingers he drew a revolver from his holster. For the instant he lost sight of the man in front of him as his eyes went upward along the cliffs and his thoughts ran ahead of them to the cabin and the girl there. The world was unnaturally silent, the pines about them like carvings in jade, without a tremor, the sunlight falling softly about them. The moment was strangely lacking the thrill of excited nerves he had anticipated.
That he and this man were standing so close together, that each held a revolver in his hand, that death was very near, and the world and life and love drawing very far away, did not impress him as he would have said that such a thing would impress him. The whole thing was too big, meant too much, for him to grasp it.
“Virginia may come,” Dalton’s deep-toned voice startled him. “We had better—hurry.”
“Yes,” he answered. “We had better hurry.”
So they stood facing each other, a gun in each right hand, the muzzles downward. There was not twenty feet between them.
“We shoot together?” Dalton was asking him.
“Yes. And the signal?”
“Count three. That will do as well as any way. Will you count?”
Farley nodded. And his voice, quiet, low, steady, with regular pauses between the words, said: