In his madness there was reason. He had come here quickly, very quickly, after shooting Thady Shea and seeing him topple into that gully; he knew that no other man could walk here and arrive so soon after he had arrived himself. He knew that this tall figure with the raw, red brand across the brow could be no living man.
“_Que quiere?_” he cried, huskily, with a great effort forcing his vocal chords to do their work. “_Que quiere?_ What do you want, hell dweller?”
Mrs. Crump, who did not believe in ghosts, and who was not easily shaken off her balance, satisfied herself that it was really Thady Shea who approached. Then she slipped to the doorway of the shack and picked up the blacksnake whip which she had tossed away. She stood at the corner of the shack, waiting, watching Abel Dorales, her lips grimly clenched into a thin line. She was quite content to let Thady Shea settle his own score with the man.
Thady came forward, wordless, his gaze fastened upon Dorales, deep anger gleaming in those intensely black eyes. Abel Dorales, ashen white, edged around the side of the bowlder. His hand drifted to his pocket; it flashed up again with a revolver.
But as Abel Dorales swung down that revolver, as he drew down on Thady Shea for a desperate ghost-quelling shot, something snaked out through the air—something that seemed to leap from the expert arm of Mehitabel Crump. It curled about the wrist of Abel Dorales, it curled and clung with vicious snap about his hand and fingers; as the head of a rattlesnake is snapped and tugged from his body with one whipcrack, so the revolver was torn from the hand of Dorales and sent flying out upon the stones.
As has been previously seen, Thady Shea knew nothing about the science and art of fighting. His was a blind, primitive, untutored lust for vengeance. He had heard that resonant voice telling the story of his death; he had heard, lifting to him above the crest of the hogback, that false tale designed to blacken his memory, and now he plunged headlong at Abel Dorales, angered as he had never been angered in his life.
Stricken and all unstrung by what he had taken to be an apparition, Abel Dorales tried to stumble away, cowering. But in a moment the furious, clumsy blows of Thady Shea proved that here was real flesh and blood; Shea landed one smash that all but stove in the ribs of his enemy. In his arms was terrific strength, had he but known how to use it. Perhaps it was as well that the knowledge was lacking, else Dorales had died very brutally and quickly.