Beth Norvell

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.