Page:Allan Dunn--Dead Man's Gold.djvu/22

8 can see it's thick by the lay of the land. Others saw that, that's why we got a claim on it at all. But the gold's at the bottom of it, that's the main thing."

He stopped suddenly. Jim Stone, watching his face, saw the kindlier wrinkles about eyes and mouth vanish while sterner lines, more deeply bitten, asserted themselves. The gray eyes flashed and hardened. Even the white beard seemed to bristle, like a mane. Lyman had suddenly thrown off years like a cloak. His actions, generally deliberate, were faster than the eye could record, coördinate, purposeful.

He swept aside Stone with one strong hand while the other swooped down to the holster of the heavy six-gun at his right hip. Stone, over his shoulder, saw the other men in the barroom flattening themselves against bar and wall, rising hurriedly from their seats. The bartender had disappeared. The door had opened and, in its frame, silhouetted against the golden glow of the sunset, stood the figure of a man; sinister, menacing, a triangle of light swiftly enlarging between his crooked elbow and his body, like the shutter of a camera, then closing. From the black bulk of his body there came a burst of red fire, a split-second before Lyman's gun spat out its bullet. The two reports blended, roaring in the low-ceilinged room. Stone never lost the fancy that he heard the actual thup of the missile that struck Wat Lyman's breast and sent him staggering back against his partner, clutching at the bevel of the bar. Then