She was conscious of hasty movements beside her. The two other men, awaking from their stupor and sensing their opportunity as De Launay was hit, were drawing their guns.
“Stand still!” thundered De Launay and she stiffened 302 automatically. His hands had dropped from the doorway and now they seemed to snap upward with incredible speed and in them were two squat and heavy automatics, their grizzly muzzles sweeping like the snap of a whip to a line directly at herself, as it seemed.
Two shots again rocked her with their concussion. They seemed merely echoes of the flaming roars from the big automatics as each of them spoke. A man standing against the wall some feet away from De Launay ducked sharply, with a cry. The shot fired by the Slugger had gone wide, narrowly missing him. A chip flew from the door lintel near De Launay’s head. The man from Arkansas was shooting closer.
Solange was conscious that some one beside her had grunted heavily and that some one else was choking distressingly. She could not look around but she heard a heavy slump to her left. To her right something fell more suddenly and sharply, splashing soggily in the muck. Then, once more the powder burned her cheek and the eardrum was numbed under an explosion.
“I got you, Louisiana!” came Banker’s yell. She saw De Launay stagger again and felt that she was about to faint.
“Stand still!” he shouted again. She knew she was sheltering his murderer and that, from behind her, the finishing shot was already being aimed over 303 her shoulder. Yet, although she felt that she must risk her life in order to get out of line and give him a chance, his voice still dominated her and she stiffened.
One of the big pistols swept into line and belched fire and noise at her. She heard the brittle snapping of bone at her ear and something struck her sharply on the collar bone, a snapping blow, as though some hard and heavy object had struck and glanced upward and away. Then the second pistol crashed at her.
Again she heard the sound of something smashing behind her. There was no other sound except the noise of something slipping. That something then slid, splashing, to the floor.
De Launay’s pistols were lowered and he was taking a step into the room. Solange noted that he staggered again, that the deerskin waistcoat was stained, and she tried to find strength to run to him.
She saw, as she moved, the huddled figures at her side where the dead men lay, and she knew that there was another behind her. She heard the slopping of feet in the mud as men closed in from all about her. She heard awe-struck voices commenting on what had happened.