Winston could never afterward recall having heard any report, yet as he
stepped across the threshold a sharp flare of red fire cleft the
blackness to his left. As though this was a signal he leaped
recklessly forward, running blindly along the narrow path toward the
ore-dump. Some trick of memory led him to remember a peculiar swerve
in the trail just beneath the upper rim of the canyon. It must have
been about there that he saw the flash, and he plunged over the edge,
both hands outstretched in protection of his eyes from injury should he
collide with any obstacle in the darkness. The deep shadows blinded
him, but there was no hesitancy, some instinct causing him to feel the
urgent need of haste. Once he stumbled and fell headlong, but was as
instantly up again, bruised yet not seriously hurt. His revolver was
jerked loose from his belt, but the man never paused to search for it.
Even as he regained his feet, his mind bewildered by the shock, his
ears distinguished clearly the cry of a woman, the sound of heavy feet
crushing through underbrush. It was to his right, and he hurled
himself directly into the thick chaparral in the direction from whence
the sound came.
He knew not what new terror awaited him, what peril lurked in the path.
At that moment he cared nothing. Bareheaded, pushing desperately aside
the obstructing branches, his heart throbbing, his clothing torn, his
face white with determination, he struggled madly forward, stumbling,
creeping, fighting a passage, until he finally emerged, breathless but
resolute, into a little cove extending back into the rock wall. From
exertion and excitement he trembled from head to foot, the perspiration
dripping from his face.
He stopped. The sight which met him for the moment paralyzed both
speech and motion. Halfway across the open space, only dimly revealed
in the star-light, her long hair dislodged and flying wildly about her
shoulders, the gleam of the weapon in her hand, apparently stopped in
the very act of flight, her eyes filled with terror staring back toward
him, stood Beth Norvell. In that first instant he saw nothing else,
thought only of her; of the intense peril that had so changed the girl.
With hands outstretched he took a quick step toward her, marvelling why
she crouched and shrank back before him as if in speechless fright.
Then he saw. There between them, at his very feet, the face upturned
and ghastly, the hands yet clinched as if in struggle, lay the lifeless
body of Biff Farnham. As though fascinated by the sight, Winston
stared at it, involuntarily drawing away as the full measure of this
awful horror dawned upon him: she had killed him. Driven to the deed
by desperation, goaded to it by insult and injury, tried beyond all
power of human endurance, she had taken the man's life. This fact was
all he could grasp, all he could comprehend. It shut down about him
like a great blackness. In the keen agony of that moment of
comprehension Winston recalled how she had once confessed temptation to
commit the deed; how she had even openly threatened it in a tempest of
sudden passion, if this man should ever seek her again. He had done
so, and she had redeemed her pledge. He had dared, and she had struck.
Under God, no one could justly blame her; yet the man's heart sank,
leaving him faint and weak, reeling like a drunken man, as he realized
what this must mean--to her, to him, to all the world. Right or wrong,
justified or unjustified, the verdict of law spelled murder; the
verdict of society, ostracism. It seemed to him that he must stifle;
his brain was whirling dizzily. He saw it all as in a flash of
lightning--the arrest, the pointing fingers, the bitterness of
exposure, the cruel torture of the court, the broken-hearted woman
cowering before her judges. Oh, God! it was too much! Yet what could
he do? How might he protect, shield her from the consequences of this
awful act? The law! What cared he for the law, knowing the story of
her life, knowing still that he loved her? For a moment the man
utterly forgot himself in the intensity of his agony for her. This
must inevitably separate them more widely than ever before; yet he
would not think of that--only of what he could do now to aid her. He
tore open his shirt, that he might have air, his dull gaze uplifting
piteously from the face of the dead to the place where she stood, her
hands pressed against her head, her great eyes staring at him as though
she confronted a ghost. Her very posture shocked him, it was so filled
with speechless horror, so wild with undisguised terror. Suddenly she
gave utterance to a sharp cry, that was half a sob, breaking in her
throat.