But, simultaneous with her cry, came the flash and crack of his gun. Staggering with the shock of the bullet, she clutched at her bosom in stupid bewilderment.
“Oh, God!” she gasped in her agony. “Oh, bub-bub-bub!” And, swaying with a side-long lurch, she fell heavily to the ground.
For a few seconds the two men remained motionless, stupefied at the tragedy that had been enacted before their eyes. Then the policeman’s gun spoke and, with a groaning blasphemy, Harry reeled back, dangling a shattered left wrist that he had flung up instinctively to shield his head.
Again and again the Sergeant pressed the trigger, but a succession of empty clicks were all that followed. With dismay he then recollected expending four fruitless long-range shots at a coyote that evening whilst exercising Johnny, and neglecting to reload.
He was at the other’s mercy. But that individual, seemingly demoralized by the excruciating torture of his wound, failed to profit by his advantage. Still clutching his gun, he wheeled around and dashed for the railroad track.
In feverish haste Ellis ejected the spent shells, dragged forth three more cartridges and, thrusting them into the cylinder of his weapon, with the practised flip of the finished gun-fighter, flung two more shots after the fugitive, who had recoiled from his sudden contact with the barbed-wire fence that ran alongside the track.
At the second report Harry pitched forward on his face, but the next moment he had rolled under the lower strand of the wire, arisen to his feet again and limped away in the gloom, heading for the station. Benton’s first fierce impulse was to follow in immediate pursuit, but a low moan of intense half-conscious agony from the stricken girl checked him.
“Can’t get far winged like that, anyway,” he muttered. “I’ll get him later.”
Stooping down, he gently gathered up the inanimate body in his powerful arms and strode towards the cottage with his burden. The head, with its soft mass of curly dark hair, lolling over helplessly against his shoulder like a tired child’s, whilst the bright arterial blood pumped in quick jets from the bullet wound in her breast all down the front of his stable-jacket.
With an impatient thrust of his knee, he burst open the gate and, climbing the few steps, entered through the open door into the front room, where a lamp was burning. Here he deposited the girl on a low couch.