“If he lights around here,” she heard Banker cackling, “we’ll down him, we will! I’ll add a thousand more to what the lady gives. We’ll keep a lookout, boys, an’ when he shows up, he dies!”
Then his shrill, evil cry arose again and men turned from their pursuits to look at him. The foam stood on his lips, writhen into a snarl over yellow fangs and his red eyes flamed with insanity.
“He’ll die! They all dies! Only old Jim don’t die. French Pete dies; Panamint dies; that there young Dave dies! But old Jim don’t die!”
Solange turned pale as he half rose, leaning on the table with one hand while the other rested on the butt of his six-shooter. A great terror surged over her as she saw what she had let loose on her lover.
Her lover! For the first time she realized that he was her lover and that, despite crime and insult and deadly injury, he could be nothing else. She staggered to her feet, shoving back the brim of her hat, her wonderful eyes showing for the first time as she turned them on these grim wolves who faced her.
“My God!” said the bruiser, in a sudden burst of awe as he was caught by the fathomless depths. The man from Arkansas could not see them so clearly, but he sensed something disturbing and unusual. 297 Banker faced her and tried to tear his own eyes from her.
Then, as they stood and sat in tableau, the flimsy door to the shack flew open and Louisiana stood on the threshold, holsters sagging on each hip and tied down around his thighs. 298