Murder and lust and
mad passion were hidden in the darkness; law and order and civilization
were hundreds of miles away. If Graham won, only the unmapped tundras
would remember this night, as the deep, dark kloof remembered in its
gloom the other tragedy of more than half a century ago. And the girl at
his side, already disheveled and muddied by their hands--
His mind could go no farther, and angry protest broke in a low cry from
his lips. The girl thought it was because of the shadows that loomed up
suddenly in their path. There were two of them, and she, too, cried out
as voices commanded them to stop. Alan caught a swift up-movement of an
arm, but his own was quicker. Three spurts of flame darted in lightning
flashes from his pistol, and the man who had raised his arm crumpled to
the earth, while the other dissolved swiftly into the storm-gloom. A
moment later his wild shouts were assembling the pack, while the
detonations of Alan's pistol continued to roll over the tundra.
The unexpectedness of the shots, their tragic effect, the falling of the
stricken man and the flight of the other, brought no word from Mary
Standish. But her breath was sobbing, and in the lifting of the purplish
gloom she turned her face for an instant to Alan, tensely white, with
wide-open eyes. Her hair covered her like a shining veil, and where it
clustered in a disheveled mass upon her breast Alan saw her hand
thrusting itself forward from its clinging concealment, and in it--to
his amazement--was a pistol.
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