The Gallup House had become a vortex of violent excitement. It was shouted out that two men were dead, Bruce Standing shot by the new adventuress whom many had noted; Jim Taggart killed as he sought to put her under arrest. Voices clashed and so did thoughts and purposes. Men streamed out into the firelit road; they heard running feet marking the way the two fugitives had taken, and started headlong in pursuit, stumbling and falling in the dark, and for the first few moments making slight headway. Others, Gallup among them, were already with Taggart, lifting him up and bearing him off to a bed. Still others, hearkening to the strange word that a woman had killed Bruce Standing, were suddenly charged with the morbid curiosity to look upon this man dead. They found their way to the lighted window through which Lynette Brooke had escaped, and through it made their way into the room, until the small space was thick with their jostling bodies. All the while Billy Winch was beating at the door, yelling curses and, at last, when he heard them within, commanding and imploring to be let in. A man, stepping over Timber-Wolf's body, obeyed and Billy Winch hopped in. Immediately he was down at his chief's side, squatting, after his own awkward fashion, upon a knee and balanced by a stub of a leg.
"He ain't dead!" Billy Winch's breath was expelled in a long, grateful sigh, which, before his lungs flattened, was choked by a nervous giggle. "I'm here, Timber," he said softly. "You know me, old boy!"
"You damn little fool," was Bruce Standing's grunted answer. Yet his voice was gentle and his eyes for one rare and fleeting instant as soft as a lover's.
Billy Winch, a man of resource, was now himself again, cool and past all silly sentiment. He turned from the fallen man to the crowding onlookers, and his eyes darkened with fury. He snatched up the rifle which Standing had let fall, and, still kneeling, whipped it up over his head, brandishing it like a war club.
"Out of this, every one of you!" he shouted at them. "Give him air and give me room to work in, else I bash your brains out!"
Had he been less in earnest some man of them might have found occasion to mark the absurdity of a cripple, squatting on the floor, waving a gun over his head and ordering them about. But as things were, no man appeared to glimpse this angle of it. One by one, with his eyes and the eyes of Timber-Wolf glaring at them, they went hastily out through the window.
"Ought to get a doctor in a hurry," one of the retreating men was suggesting.
Billy Winch cursed him into silence. For Winch held himself as good a physician and surgeon as any, having served in the veterinary capacity for a score of years and having a natural aptitude for treating bad cuts and gun wounds. Further, he loved this Timber-Wolf; and beyond, with all his heart, Billy Winch distrusted and hated the breed of doctors. His stump of a leg he attributed to the profound ignorance drawn by the medical and surgical profession from their books of theories.
"You ain't even bad hurt, Timber," he growled, as though disappointed and angered that he had been tricked into a show of affection and fright. His look accused Standing of having wilfully deceived him. "Must have been just the shock, what we call the impack, that knocked you over.... Oh, lie still, can't you!"
But Bruce Standing gave him no heed, and continued in his attempt to draw himself up. While Billy Winch sat on the floor and looked up at him, the bigger man got slowly to his feet and stood leaning against the door.