Page:Arthur Stringer - Gun Runner.djvu/308

 "There are four men and an ofﬁcer," he mused irrelevantly. Then he looked down at his watch, and turned abruptly to the girl again.

"You have a revolver?” he asked. She showed him the weapon. He looked it over, saw that it was fully loaded, and handed it back to her.

"Have you ever learned to use it?” he asked. She looked at him with growing wonder.

"I don’t think I could kill a man," she said, very quietly and very slowly.

"But could you protect yourself, at a pinch? Could you shoot round a little with it, I mean?"

"I have learned to shoot,” she said, white-lipped.

"Good; then that makes three!" he exclaimed. Her wide eyes, following him as he crossed to his trunk and opened it, detected the fact that, for all his assumption of jocularity, his hand was shaking a little as he held Ganley’s huge revolver and his own under the electric light. He ﬁrst saw that these two revolvers were fully loaded. Then he overturned a green cardboard box and counted his cartridges. There were one hundred and eighty-three, all told.

"What must I do?" she asked, as bravely as she could, taking the handful of cartridges he had doled out for her.