“Stand aside, wench—”
“Will you fight a mere lad? Off, you great coward! I’ll hold him, David, run, lad, run!”
There was an angry uproar, an oath or two, the sound of men scuffling and struggling together. A woman’s figure broke away suddenly through the moving mist, red cloaked, hood thrown back, black hair in a tangle. She came close to Jeffray’s horse, her hands to her bosom, her white face straining towards the west. She ran up to him, snatched at his bridle, looking up fiercely in his face.
“Quick, or he’ll murder him—”
“Who?”
“Black Dan. He’s a devil when angry. Quick! You have pistols; give me one—”
She snatched one from Jeffray’s holster, looked to the priming, and without so much as waiting for a word from him, darted away over the heather. Richard, as though compelled, turned his horse, clapped in the spurs, and followed. He could see two men struggling together in the mist under the trees. The girl was running towards them, brandishing her pistol, and shouting as she ran.
“Off, Dan, or I’ll shoot ye. David, there’s help coming. Take your hand off his throat, you devil.”
The struggling figures swayed and fell of a sudden. Young David, with Dan’s fist at his throat, had tripped the giant, and slipped free in the fall. Quick as a cat he broke away from his brother’s clutches as they rolled on the ground, and scrambling up, took to his heels over the heather. Dan was up and after him like a plunging hound, shouting and cursing as he lumbered in pursuit. Before Bess had reached the trees they had both disappeared down the hill-side into the mist.
She turned suddenly and faced Jeffray, and held out the pistol to him by the stock as he rode up. He had recognized her as the girl he had seen under the beech-trees with the old woman tending pigs.