Page:Arthur Stringer - Gun Runner.djvu/365

, until the magazines were emptied and the barrels were too hot to hold. But he could no longer keep his ground clear. They were at last clearing the creek-bank, clearing it in swarms. They were finally overwhelming him, in sheer force of numbers.

Powder-smoke enveloped him. Dust and splinters flew about him. Runnels of sweat ran down his lean and grimy face. But still he kept firing, faster and faster, pouring his lead into the advancing line in a frenzy of hopelessness.

Then one of the guns jammed, irretrievably. He caught up the other, and emptied it, until the overheated steel scorched his shaking hand. But still the ragged and shouting line came on, unchecked. He had nothing but the revolvers to fall back on. So he snatched them and stood up to it, breast-high above the sand-box rampart in front of him.

"Come on, you cowards" he exulted, drunkenly, reelingly, as he faced and watched the spitting and snapping and ever-advancing line, for he knew it was the end. Then the girl dragged him down, while she reloaded, and caught up the third revolver and stood at his side, with her breast against a smoke-blackened cartridge-box.

"It's the end!" he said.