With a gasp Helen flashed her eyes back to Dale. He had seen her--was reaching an arm toward her. Then she saw the man lying almost at her feet. Jeff Mulvey--her uncle's old foreman! His face was awful to behold. A smoking gun lay near his inert hand. The other man had fallen on his face. His garb proclaimed him a Mexican. He was not yet dead. Then Helen, as she felt Dale's arm encircle her, looked farther, because she could not prevent it--looked on at that strange figure against the bar--this boy who had been such a friend in her hour of need--this naive and frank sweetheart of her sister's.
She saw a man now--wild, white, intense as fire, with some terrible cool kind of deadliness in his mien. His left elbow rested upon the bar, and his hand held a glass of red liquor. The big gun, low down in his other hand, seemed as steady as if it were a fixture.
"Heah's to thet--half-breed Beasley an' his outfit!"
Carmichael drank, while his flaming eyes held the crowd; then with savage action of terrible passion he flung the glass at the quivering form of the still living Mexican on the floor.
Helen felt herself slipping. All seemed to darken around her. She could not see Dale, though she knew he held her. Then she fainted.