If Joan struggled at all, it was only slightly, when she writhed and slipped, like a snake, to get her arm under his as it clasped her neck.  Then she let herself go.  He crushed her to him.  He bent her backward—­tilted her face with hard and eager hand.  Like a madman, with hot working lips, he kissed her.  She felt blinded—­scorched.  But her purpose was as swift and sure and wonderful as his passion was wild.  The first reach of her groping hand found his gun-belt.  Swift as light her hand slipped down.  Her fingers touched the cold gun—­grasped with thrill on thrill—­slipped farther down, strong and sure to raise the hammer.  Then with a leaping, strung intensity that matched his own she drew the gun.  She raised it while her eyes were shut.  She lay passive under his kisses—­the devouring kisses of one whose manhood had been denied the sweetness, the glory, the fire, the life of woman’s lips.  It was a moment in which she met his primitive fury of possession with a woman’s primitive fury of profanation.  She pressed the gun against his side and pulled the trigger.

A thundering, muffled, hollow boom!  The odor of burned powder stung her nostrils.  Kells’s hold on her tightened convulsively, loosened with strange, lessening power.  She swayed back free of him, still with tight-shut eyes.  A horrible cry escaped him—­a cry of mortal agony.  It wrenched her.  And she looked to see him staggering amazed, stricken, at bay, like a wolf caught in cruel steel jaws.  His hands came away from both sides, dripping with blood.  They shook till the crimson drops spattered on the wall, on the boughs.  Then he seemed to realize and he clutched at her with these bloody hands.

“God Almighty!” he panted.  “You shot me! ...  You—­you girl! ...  You she-cat...  You knew—­all the time...  You she-cat! ...  Give me—­that gun!”

“Kells, get back!  I’ll kill you!” she cried.  The big gun, outstretched between them, began to waver.

Kells did not see the gun.  In his madness he tried to move, to reach her, but he could not; he was sinking.  His legs sagged under him, let him down to his knees, and but for the wall he would have fallen.  Then a change transformed him.  The black, turgid, convulsed face grew white and ghastly, with beads of clammy sweat and lines of torture.  His strange eyes showed swiftly passing thought—­wonder, fear, scorn—­even admiration.

“Joan, you’ve done—­for me!” he gasped.  “You’ve broken my back! ...  It’ll kill me!  Oh the pain—­the pain!  And I can’t stand pain!  You—­ you girl!  You innocent seventeen-year-old girl!  You that couldn’t hurt any creature!  You so tender—­so gentle! ...  Bah! you fooled me.  The cunning of a woman!  I ought—­to know.  A good woman’s—­more terrible than a—­bad woman. ...  But I deserved this.  Once I used—­to be. ...  Only, the torture! ...  Why didn’t you—­kill me outright? ...  Joan—­Randle—­watch me—­die!  Since I had—­to die—­by rope or bullet—­ I’m glad you—­you—­did for me. ...  Man or beast—­I believe—­I loved you!”