"Gentlemen," said Andrew, "I am not a bum. I am worth five thousand dollars to the man who turns me over, dead or alive, to the sheriff. My name is Andrew Lanning."
At that the faces became a terrible rushing and circling flare, and the lights went out with equal suddenness. He was left in total darkness, falling through space; but, at his last moment of consciousness, he felt arms going about him, arms through which his bulk kept slipping down, and below him was a black abyss.
CHAPTER 23
It was a very old man who held, or tried to hold, Andrew from falling to the floor. His shoulders shook under the burden of the outlaw, and the burden, indeed, would have slumped brutally to the floor, had not the small ten-year-old boy, whom Andrew had seen on the bay mare, come running in under the arms of the old man. With his meager
strength he assisted, and the two managed to lower the body gently.
The boy was frightened. He was white at the sight of the wounds, and the freckles stood out in copper patches from his pallor.
Now he clung to the old man.
"Granddad, it's the gent that tried to buy Sally!"
The old man had produced a murderous jackknife with a blade that had been ground away to the disappearing point by years of steady grinding.