Page:Frederick Faust--Free Range Lanning.djvu/156

152 his revolver in his right hand, he felt a queer touch of joy and pride at finding his nerve still unshaken. He raised the weapon, covered their bodies, and then something like an invisible hand forced down the muzzle of his gun. He could not shoot to kill!

He did what was perhaps better; he fired at that mass of legs, and even a child could not have failed to strike the target. Once, twice, and again; then the crowd melted to either side of the path, and there was a shrieking and forms twisting and writhing on the ground.

Some one was shouting orders from the side; he was ordering them to the right and left to surround the fugitive; he was calling out that Lanning was hit. At least, they would go with caution down his trail after that first check. He left his sheltering tree and ran again down the ravine.

By this time the first shock of the wounds and the numbness were leaving him, but the pain was terrible. It gathered in his shoulder and shot with hot and cold fingers up and down his side. Yet he knew that he was not fatally injured if he could stop that mortal drain of his wounds.

He heard the pursuit in the distance more and more. Every now and then there was a spasmodic outburst of shooting, and Andrew grinned in spite of his pain. They were closing around the place where they thought he was making his last stand, shooting at shadows which might be the man they wanted.

Then he stopped, tore off his shirt, and ripped it with his right hand and his teeth into strips. He tied one around his neck, knotting it until he could only draw his breath with difficulty. Several more strips he tied together, and then wound the long bandage around his shoulder and pulled. The pain brought him close to a