“Whar be ye, Byram?” he bawled.
But it was ten minutes before he found the young man, quite dead, in the long grass.
With an oath Tansey flung up his gun and drove a charge of buckshot crashing through the front door. The door quivered; the last echoes of the shot died out; silence followed.
Then the shattered door swung open slowly, and McCloud reeled out, still clutching his rifle. He tried to raise it; he could not, and it fell clattering. Tansey covered him with his shot-gun, cursing him fiercely. “Up with them hands o’ yourn!” he snarled; but McCloud only muttered and began to rock and sway in the doorway.
Tansey came up to him, shot-gun in hand. “Yew hev done fur Byram,” he said; “yew air bound to set in the chair for this.”
McCloud, leaning against the sill, looked at him with heavy eyes.
“It’s well enough for you,” he muttered; “you are only a savage; but Byram went to college—and so did I—and we are nothing but savages like you, after all—nothing but savages—”
He collapsed and slid to the ground, lying hunched up across the threshold.
“I want to see the path-master!” he cried, sharply.
A shadow fell across the shot riddled door snow-white in the moonshine.