She snatched the stick and snapped it into small pieces.
"Does that look final, Anthony?"
He could not answer for a moment. At last he said: "What a woman you would have made for a wife, Sally Fortune; what a fine pal!"
But she laughed, a mirth not forced and harsh, but clear and ringing.
"Anthony, ain't this better'n marriage?"
"By God," he answered, "I almost think you're right."
For answer a bullet ripped through the right-hand wall and buried itself in a beam on the opposite side of the room.
"Listen!" she said.
There was a fresh crackle of guns, the reports louder and longer drawn.
"Rifles," said Sally Fortune. "I knew no bullet from a six-gun could carry like that one."