Page:Allan Dunn--Dead Man's Gold.djvu/63

Rh slender neck that sprang from shoulders which showed a certain girlishness. Her dark hair was piled in a great mass held by a Spanish comb, her small, full-lipped mouth was the only touch of vivid colour, for her cheeks were but slightly dashed with rouge. It seemed to Stone as if it had been assumed as a mask, above which the dark eyes showed somber, looking at him and all the motley gathering with a fixed disdain. Her lithe movements appeared almost automatic until a half-drunken man lurched by and clutched heavily at her arm to steady himself.

In a flash she had torn herself away, her eyes flashing.

"You drunken fool," she cried. "How dare you? How dare you?"

The man stood blinking foolishly. It was her left arm he had blindly grasped. The fingers of her right caressed the bruise for a second then flew upward, groping for a weapon. Her face was still a mask but it was a mask of furious tragedy. Swiftly as she had moved, José Castro, for all his fat, moved as swiftly. His pudgy fingers pressed her right arm at the elbow, nipped it as a crab might have done, touching some tender spring of nerve and muscle, paralyzing her endeavour.

"Vamos," he hissed at the drunkard. "Git out."

Stone took him by the arm and led him away, still stupid, uncomprehending his offence, or that he had just stood vis-à-vis with Death. His companions, hurrying up, with a quick word of thanks to Stone, bore him off.