The Dark Star

Curfoot and Stull threw themselves against him, but Brandes, his round

face pasty with fury, struggled back again to confront Ilse Dumont.

"Ruined me!" he repeated. "Took away from me the only thing God ever

gave me for my own! Took my wife!"

"You dog!" said Ilse Dumont very slowly. "You dirty dog!"

A frightful spasm crossed Brandes' features, and Stull snatched at the

pistol he had whipped out. There was a struggle; Brandes wrenched the

weapon free; but Neeland tore his way past Curfoot and struck Brandes

in the face with the butt of his heavy revolver.

Instantly the group parted right and left; Sengoun suddenly twisted

out of the clutches of the men who held him, sprang upon Curfoot, and

jerked the pistol from his fist. At the same moment the entire front

of the café gave way and the mob crashed inward with a roar amid the

deafening din of shattered metal and the clash of splintering glass.

Through the dust and falling shower of débris, Brandes fired at Ilse

Dumont, reeled about in the whirl of the inrushing throng engulfing

him, still firing blindly at the woman who had been his wife.

Neeland put a bullet into his pistol arm, and it fell. But Brandes

stretched it out again with a supreme effort, pointing at Ilse Dumont

with jewelled and bloody fingers: "That woman is a German spy! A spy!" he screamed. "You damn French

mutts, do you understand what I say! Oh, my God! Will someone who

speaks French tell them! Will somebody tell them she's a spy! La

femme! Cette femme!" he shrieked. "Elle est espion! Esp----!" He

fired again, with his left hand. Then Sengoun shot him through the

head; and at the same moment somebody stabbed Curfoot in the neck; and

the lank American gambler turned and cried out to Stull in a voice

half strangled with pain and fury: "Look out, Ben. There are apaches in this mob! That one in the striped

jersey knifed me----"

"Tiens, v'la pour toi, sale mec de malheur!" muttered a voice at his

elbow, and a blow from a slung-shot crushed the base of his skull.

As Curfoot crumpled up, Stull caught him; but the tall gambler's dead

weight bore Stull to his knees among the fierce apaches.

And there, fighting in silence to the end, his chalky face of a sick

clown meeting undaunted the overwhelming odds against him, Stull was

set upon by the apaches and stabbed and stabbed until his clothing was

a heap of ribbons and the watch and packet of French bank-notes which

the assassins tore from his body were dripping with his blood.

Sengoun and Neeland, their evening clothes in tatters, hatless,

dishevelled, began shooting their way out of the hell of murder and

destruction raging around them.