The Fighting Shepherdess - Page 172/231

"Now--they're coming! The smoke rolls back a bit--I see--quite plain--Oh! Oh!" A look of horror froze on her gray face, and her voice rose to a shriek. "He says he's Mormon Joe! He cries--Confess! Confess!"

To Mullendore with his inflamed brain and nerves jangling like a network of loose wire, she seemed like a direct emissary from the place of torment, which was as real to him as the wagon in which he lay.

The half-breed had tried to convince himself by saying over and over mechanically: "There ain't no hell--there ain't no comin' back--there ain't nothin' after this,"--but the denial was only of the lips--atavism was stronger than his will. He believed, as much as he believed that on the morrow the sun would rise, in a real and definite hell, filled with the shrieking spirits of the damned. In these final hours it had required all his weakened will to hide his fears and keep his tongue between his teeth. Now, like a man clinging by his finger tips to some small crevice in a cliff, he suddenly gave up. As he relaxed his grip he whispered with the last faint remnant of his strength: "I own up--I set the gun--I--I--"

Teeters slipped an arm about his shoulders and raised him up.

"Where did you git it, Mullendore?"

His answer was a breath.

"Toomey."

"One thing more--Where does Kate Prentice's father live? His address--quick!" Teeters shook the wasted shoulders in his haste.

The muddy blue-gray iris was divided in half by the closing upper lids. Beneath the glaze there seemed a last malicious spark. Then his tongue clicked as it dropped to the back of his mouth, and Mullendore was dead.