She jammed it against his heart again and cried, "Come with me or I'll kill you!"
He followed her, wondering rather than fearing, and she swept a group of men with the weapon, and commanded, "You men come, too." She marched them to the spot where Drury was concealed, and pointed to him and snarled, "Get him out!"
The men tested their strength here and there without promise of success. One group started a heap of wheels to slewing downward and Crosson shouted to them to stop. An inch more, and they would have buried Drury from sight or hope.
One man wormed through somehow and caught Drury by the hand, but the first tug brought from him such a wail of anguish that the man fell back. He could not budge the body clamped with steel. He could only wrench it. So he came away.
"There's nothing for me to do, Reny," the doctor faltered, and, choked with pity for her and her lover and the helplessness of mankind, he turned away, and she let him go. The gun fell to the ground.
The other men left the place. One of them said that the wrecking-crew would be along with a derrick in a few hours.
"A few hours!" Irene whimpered.
She leaned against the lattice that kept her from the bridegroom and tried to tell him to be brave. But he had heard his sentence, and with his last hope went what little courage he had ever had.
He began to plead and protest and weep. He gave voice to all the voices of pain, the myriad voices from every tormented particle of him.
Irene knelt down and twisted through the crevice to where she could hold his hand. But he snatched it away, babbling: "Don't touch me! Don't touch me!"