He
caught her. The slim body crumpled in his arms again while pitifully
weak hands beat futilely in his face.
And then came a cry such as no man had ever heard in Ghost Kloof before.
It was Stampede Smith. A sheer twenty feet he had leaped to the carpet
of sand, and as he jumped his hands whipped out his two guns, and
scarcely had his feet touched the floor of the soft pocket in the ledge
when death crashed from them swift as lightning flashes, and three of
the five were tottering or falling before the other two could draw or
swing a rifle. Only one of them had fired a shot. The other went down as
if his legs had been knocked from under him by a club, and the one who
fired bent forward then, as if making a bow to death, and pitched on
his face.
And then Stampede Smith whirled upon John Graham.
During these few swift seconds Graham had stood stunned, with the girl
crushed against his breast. He was behind her, sheltered by her body,
her head protecting his heart, and as Stampede turned he was drawing a
gun, his dark face blazing with the fiendish knowledge that the other
could not shoot without killing the girl. The horror of the situation
gripped Stampede. He saw Graham's pistol rise slowly and deliberately.
He watched it, fascinated. And the look in Graham's face was the cold
and unexcited triumph of a devil.
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