“John Graham, I’m going to kill you—kill
you—”
And snatching up the fallen rifle Mary Standish set
herself to the task of vengeance.
She waited. The ferocity of a mother defending
her young filled her soul, and she moaned in her grief
and despair as the seconds passed. But she did
not fire blindly, for she knew she must kill John Graham.
The troublesome thing was a strange film that persisted
in gathering before her eyes, something she tried
to brush away, but which obstinately refused to go.
She did not know she was sobbing as she looked over
the rifle barrel. The figures came swiftly, but
she had lost sight of John Graham. They reached
the upheaval of shattered rock and began climbing
it, and in her desire to make out the man she hated
she stood above the rampart that had sheltered her.
The men looked alike, jumping and dodging like so
many big tundra hares as they came nearer, and suddenly
it occurred to her that all of them were John
Grahams, and that she must kill swiftly and accurately.
Only the hiding fairies might have guessed how her
reason trembled and almost fell in those moments when
she began firing. Certainly John Graham and his
men did not, for her first shot was a lucky one, and
a man slipped down among the rocks at the crack of
it. After that she continued to fire until the
responseless click of the hammer told her the gun
was empty. The explosions and the shock against
her slight shoulder cleared her vision and her brain.
She saw the men still coming, and they were so near
she could see their faces clearly. And again
her soul cried out in its desire to kill John Graham.
She turned, and for an instant fell upon her knees
beside Alan. His face was hidden in his arm.
Swiftly she tore his automatic from its holster, and
sprang back to her rock. There was no time to
wait or choose now, for his murderers were almost
upon her. With all her strength she tried to
fire accurately, but Alan’s big gun leaped and
twisted in her hand as she poured its fire wildly
down among the rocks until it was empty. Her
own smaller weapon she had lost somewhere in the race
to the kloof, and now when she found she had fired
her last shot she waited through another instant of
horror, until she was striking at faces that came
within the reach of her arm. And then, like a
monster created suddenly by an evil spirit, Graham
was at her side. She had a moment’s vision
of his cruel, exultant face, his eyes blazing with
a passion that was almost madness, his powerful body
lunging upon her. Then his arms came about her.
She could feel herself crushing inside them, and fought
against their cruel pressure, then broke limply and
hung a resistless weight against him. She was
not unconscious, but her strength was gone, and if
the arms had closed a little more they would have killed
her.
And she could hear—clearly. She heard
suddenly the shots that came from up the kloof, scattered
shots, then many of them, and after that the strange,
wild cries that only the Eskimo herdsmen make.
