She turned her head, all that she could turn.
He was bending over the fire, and when he straightened she saw that he held something in his hand ... a long bar of metal, white at the shaped end. At once her memory showed her a broad glow of sunset falling over Pierre at work. “There’ll be stock all over the country marked with them two bars,” he had said. “The Two-Bar Brand, don’t you fergit it!” She was not likely to forget it now.
She shut her eyes. He stepped close to her and jerked her blouse down from her shoulder. She writhed away from him, silent in her rage and fear and fighting dumbly. She made no appeal. At that moment her heart was so full of hatred that it was hardened to pride. He lifted his brand and set it against the bare flesh of her shoulder.
Then terribly she screamed. Again, when he took the metal away, she screamed. Afterwards there was a dreadful silence.
Joan had not lost consciousness. Her healthy nerves stanchly received the anguish and the shock, nor did she make any further outcry. She pressed her forehead against the sharp edge of the shelf, she drove her nails into her hands, and at intervals she writhed from head to foot. Circles of pain spread from the deep burn on her shoulder, spread and shrank, to spread and shrink again. The bones of her shoulder and arm ached terribly; fire still seemed to be eating into her flesh. The air was full of the smell of scorched skin so that she tasted it herself. And hotter than her hurt her heart burned consuming its own tenderness and love and trust.
When this pain left her, when she was free of her bonds, no force nor fear would hold her to Pierre. She would leave him as she had left her father. She would go away. There was no place for her to go to, but what did that matter so long as she might escape from this horrible place and this infernal tormentor? She did not look about to see the actuality of Pierre’s silence. She thought that he had dropped the brand and was sitting near the table with his face hidden. How long the stillness of pain and fury and horror lasted there was no one to reckon. It was most startlingly broken by a voice. “Who screamed for help?” it said, and at the same instant a draught of icy air smote Joan. The door had opened with suddenness and violence. With difficulty she mastered her pain and turned her head.
Pierre had staggered to his feet. Opposite him, framed against the open door filled with the wan whiteness of the snow, stood a spare, tall figure. The man wore his fur collar turned up about his chin and ears, his fur cap pulled down about his brow, a sharp aquiline nose stood out above frozen mustaches, keen and brilliant eyes searched the room. He carried his gun across his arm in readiness, and snuffed the air like a suspicious hound. Then he advanced a step toward Pierre.
“What devil’s work have you been at?” said he, his voice cutting the ear in its sharpness of astonished rage, and his hand slid down along the handle of his gun.
Pierre, watching him like a lynx, side-stepped, crouched, whipped out his gun, and fired. At almost the same second the other’s gun went off. Pierre dropped.
This time Joan’s nerves gave way and the room, with its smell of scorched flesh, of powder, and of frost, went out from her horrified senses. For a moment the stranger’s stern face and brilliant eyes made the approaching center of a great cloud of darkness, then it too went out.