He paid her tribute with a flash of his shining blue eyes. That was for the physical beauty of her; that said, "Outwardly, girl, you are superb!" Yet it remained that, his one weakness shaming him, she had laughed at him. For the first time in his life a girl had laughed at him....
She saw the sudden changing fires in his eyes and stepped closer to the table on which lay that small, high-powered implement which puts the weak on a level with the strong....
There came a sudden sharp rapping at the door against which his broad back leaned. There was Babe Deveril, who had lunged after him. Timber-Wolf, growling savagely, flung himself about, for the second ignoring the girl and facing the door. Deveril, just without, heard the bolt shot home. And then he heard the second, the sinister sound. A revolver shot, muffled by the four walls of a room. And he heard Timber-Wolf, whose back had been turned to Lynette Brooke and the gun upon the table, curse deep down in his throat, and heard almost simultaneously the scraping of the heavy boots and the crashing fall of the big body. Deveril shook fiercely at the door. Then he turned and ran back down the hall, meaning to go through the room he had just quitted and on through so as to come to Lynette's room by the rear.
But in the sitting-room Billy Winch, teetering on his one foot, grasped him by the arm, demanding to know what had happened. Deveril savagely shook him off, and Winch, raising the echoes with a shrilling voice, toppled over and fell. But little time had been wasted, and yet, before Deveril could free himself and run on, Lynette Brooke ran in upon him. Her eyes were wild and staring; in her hand was her revolver, so lately fired that the last wisp of smoke had not cleared from the barrel.
"Babe Deveril," she gasped. "They are after me!"
It was Sheriff Taggart who was after her. He was almost at her heels, shouting:
"Stop! In the name of the law! You are under arrest for killing Bruce Standing...."
Babe Deveril carried no weapon upon him. And he saw Taggart's pistols dragging at his belt, the heavy forty-fives which, as sheriff, he was entitled to carry openly. Taggart's hands were almost upon her.
Deveril did the one thing. He caught at the gun in Lynette's hand and wrenched it free, and, having no time for accurate aim, did not fire, but hurled the revolver itself, with all of his might, full into Taggart's face. And Taggart, as though a thunderbolt had struck him, went down, with a steel barrel driven against his skull, near the temple, and lay a crumpled, still heap.