But Macartney fired full in my face.
It was Marcia's flying jump that made him miss me. Even though his very cartridge was one of hers that she always carried in her pockets, and must have been given to him the first thing, I don't think she had been prepared to see me killed. I didn't wait to see. I was down the passage to Paulette before Macartney could get in a second shot. As he, and some of the bunk-house men tore out of the living room after me, I fired into the brown mass of them with my own gun, that I snatched from Paulette. I thought it checked them, and lit out of the kitchen door, into the wind and the dark and the raving, swirling snow, with my dream girl's hand gripped in mine. We plunged knee-deep, waist-deep through the drifts, for our lives,—for mine, anyhow.
"Thompson's stope," I gasped; and she said yes. I couldn't see an inch before me, but I think we would have made it, since Macartney could not see, either. I knew we were far ahead of him, but that was all I did know, till I heard myself shout to Paulette, "Run!"—and felt my legs double under me. If something hit me on the head like a ton of brick I had no sense of what had happened, as people have in books. I only realized I had been knocked out when I felt myself coming to. Somehow it felt quite natural to be deadly faint and sick, and lying flat, like a log,—till I put out my hand and touched hard rock.
"I don't see how it's rock," I thought dully; "it ought to be snow! Something hit me—out in the snow with Paulette!" And with that sense came back to me, like a red-hot iron in my brain. I had been out in the snow with Paulette; one of Macartney's men must have hit me a swipe on the head and got her from me. But—where in heaven's name was Paulette now? The awful, sickening thought made me so wild that I scrambled to my knees to find out in what ungodly hole I had been put myself. I had been carried somewhere, and the rock under me felt like the mine. But somehow the darkness round me did not smell like a mine, where men worked every day. It smelt cold, desolate, abandoned, like——
And suddenly I knew where Macartney's men had carried me when I was knocked out! It was no comfort to me that it was to the very place where I had meant to jail Macartney and hide Paulette, where Charliet and I were to have stood off Macartney's men.
"Thompson's stope," I gasped. "It's there Macartney's put me!" I crawled, sick and dizzy, to what ought to have been the tunnel and the tunnel entrance, opening on the storm out of doors. The tunnel was there, all right. But as I fumbled to what ought to have been the open entrance, stillness met me, instead of a rush of wind; piled rock met my groping hands, instead of piled snow. I was in Thompson's abandoned stope all right,—only Macartney had sealed up the only way I could ever get out! I shoved, and dug, and battered, as uselessly as a rat in a trap, and suddenly knew that was just what I was! Macartney had not even taken the trouble to kill me,—not to avoid visible murder at this stage of the game, when only the enemy was left, if you did not count a duped woman and a captured one; but for the sheer pleasure of realizing the long, slow death that must get me in the end.
"Die here—I've got to die here," I heard my own voice in my ears. "While——My God, Paulette! Macartney's got Paulette!"
And in the darkness behind me somebody slipped on a stone.
I had not thought I could ever feel light and fierce again. I was both, as I swung round.