Page:Arthur Stringer - Gun Runner.djvu/170

 "No," he said, his thick voice shaken a little with his close-held passion. "I'm not going to shoot. But I'm going to pound your lying head in with this gun-grip—I'm going to pound you till your own mother wouldn't know you!"

The woman uttered a little cry, not shrill enough to be a scream, not low enough to be called a moan. It was then that the waiting McKinnon swung open the door and sprang into the room.

He was barely in time to behold the infuriated Ganley, with his heavy black-handled Colt revolver held by its barrel, charge on the girl, who stood with her back against the cabin wall. He was not in time to prevent the blow that fell on the girl's out-thrust forearm, as blindly and instinctively she threw it up to guard her head. But as the clubbing gun-butt raised for its second frenzied blow the intruder sprang. As he sprang he caught the swinging revolver in his hand. One quick movement, one twist of the levering grip, wrenched it free. The next moment McKinnon's fingers were clamped on Ganley's fat and pendulous throat and he had the man in the black raincoat thrust flat back against the berth-edge, gasping for breath, pawing the air with his thick, fat hands.

"You hound, to treat a woman like that!" was all the overwrought McKinnon could say.