Dixie, watching critically the crouching figure on the sponson—for the Kid was shivering and making little sounds, obviously caught in the acute physical distress into which extreme sudden fear will at times plunge a man—called abruptly: “Jim—look up!”
A nearly naked Chinese was lowering himself in a deliberate gingerly manner down a moving rope nearly overhead.
“Kill him, Jim!” Dixie added.
Singling out her clear voice from the tumult, the yellow man looked fearfully down.
The Kid, at the same moment, looked up; then, fumbling in a curiously absent way for his pistol, glanced back at Dixie.
“I'll hold the boat,” said she. “Go on—kill him!” She sat quietly, one thin arm reached out to the nearest mooring pole, looking steadily up.
The Kid, nerving himself, suddenly burst into a storm of wild oaths and shot three times into the body above him. At the first shot the man slipped down a little way.
“Push him away!” Dixie cried sharply. “I don't want him falling into the boat!”
He was shooting again; and then with an effort diverted the falling body.
Dixie got up, and stood steadying herself in the gently rocking boat; and the Kid—quit; out of breath now, and muttering, as he fondled the hot pistol, “Well, I did it, didn't I? I did what you said!”—found in her eyes, shining through the dusk of early dawn, a bright white light that was, to him, disconcerting and yet profoundly thrilling. He shivered again as he felt the spell of her strange genius. What a woman, he was thinking again, but wildly, madly, now, to conquer.