"Again," said Thornton. "Together!… Quick!"
So together Buck Thornton and Kid Bedloe, two men who had long hated each other, struck savagely at Pollard's barricade. And such was the weight of the two men, such the power resident in the two big bodies, that a hinge gave and after it an iron socket screwed to the wall was torn away from the woodwork, and the door went down.
Gathering all there was of strength left in him Kid Bedloe pushed to the fore and went down the hall; and Thornton followed at his heels. In this fashion they came to the door of Pollard's study and saw through it, since it had been flung wide open and so left.
In a far corner of the room was Winifred Waverly, her face dead white, her body pressed tight into the angle of the walls, her hands twisting before her, her eyes going swiftly to the two entering figures from that other figure which had held her fascinated. Upon the floor, just rising, knelt Ben Broderick. He had tossed a rug aside and had lifted out the short sections of half a dozen strips of flooring, disclosing a rude wooden vault below. Here was the accumulation of loot, here where the Kid had known Broderick was to be found.
For a very brief yet electrically vital and vivid moment there was no sound in the room, wherein never a single muscle twitched. And then there were no words and only three sharp pistol shots. Broderick had seen what lay in the Kid's eye, a look to be read by any man; he had snatched his gun up from the floor beside him and had fired, point blank. There is no name for the brief fragment of time between his shot and the Kid's. But Ben Broderick had shot true to the mark, and the Kid was sinking; Bedloe's bullet had gone wide…. And then the third shot, Thornton's … and as the two men fell, Kid Bedloe and Ben Broderick, they pitched forward toward the centre of the room and the big body of the Kid lay across the body of Ben Broderick. As the Kid died his eyes were upon Thornton, and in them was a look of content and of gratitude!
"Again he tried to kiss me…. He is all brute. He … he told me you were dead…. Oh, dear God, dear God!" cried the girl, shrinking back, covering her face with her hands.
Thornton, his face set and white and grave, came to her. She was trembling so that he put his arm about her. She sobbed and caught at him as a child might have done. His arm tightened, holding her closer.
"Let me take you away," he said gently.
With never a look back to see what long hoarded booty there in the hole in the floor had drawn Ben Broderick back to Pollard's house, he turned and with his arm still about her, led the girl from the room, from the house and out to his horse at the fence. She moaned again and drooped against him. He gathered her up into his arms tenderly. And with a tenderness which was to become part of the man, he held her close while he swung slowly into the saddle.
"Winifred Waverly…." he began.