"I'm — I'm desprit. I gotta take a peek. I gotta — gotta——"
Something in Leverett's unsteady voice made Kloon turn his head.
"You gol rammed fool," he said, "what you doin' with your——"
The loud detonation of the rifle punctuated Kloon's inquiry with a final period. The big, soft-nosed bullet struck him full in the face, spilling his brains and part of his skull down his back, and knocking him flat as though he had been clubbed.
Leverett, stunned, sat staring, motionless, clutching the rifle from the muzzle of which a delicate stain of vapour floated and disappeared through a rosy bar of sunshine.
In the intense stillness of the place, suddenly the dead man made a sound; and the trap-robber nearly fainted.
But it was only air escaping from the slowly collapsing lungs; and Leverett, ashy pale, shaking, got to his feet and leaned heavily against an oak tree, his eyes never stirring from the sprawling thing on the ground.
* * * * *
If it were a minute or a year he stood there he could never have reckoned the space of time. The sun's level rays glimmered ruddy through the woods. A green fly appeared, buzzing about the dead man. Another zig-zagged through the sunshine, lacing it with streaks of greenish fire. Others appeared, whirling, gyrating, filling the silence with their humming. And still Leverett dared not budge, dared not search the dead and take from it that for which the dead had died.
A little breeze came by and stirred the bushy hair on Kloon's head and fluttered the ferns around him where he lay.