Page:GB Lancaster--law-bringer.djvu/275

Rh that he had brought himself under the terror of that law. "Him done some dam follishness, me s'pose," said Beaver Tail, laying the pegged skin aside. "Huh! What him want run from Carcajou, anyway? T'ink him no catch? Huh!"

"Huh!" said the chorus of derision out of the dark, and appeared to lose outward interest in the fate of Job.

Ahead of the two men, through the forest, Job's progress seemed to make the dark roar with sound. Sticks snapped, and crashed; branches whipped back as the great body hurled itself through them and the white men followed; catching the slashing twigs across their faces; stabbed by a broken stick; stumbling, jumping, climbing, pushing ever through the tangling growth, burst apart by the man ahead, and clogged by the soft snow.

Job was evilly fat and short of wind. The white men were muscle-hard and lean with the strenuous work of the summer. Job heard them gaining, and in a clearing where the white moon light was sharp on the white ground, he halted, turned, and flung his rifle up. Dick heard the bullet whistle as he ducked, still running. He heard the trigger click again; and then Tempest's weight bore on him, swinging him aside, and Tempest fired, even in the moment when he fell.

Dick had no time to understand that Tempest had possibly given one life to save the other. He scrambled up, feeling the sandy snow grit in his ungloved hands, and rushed in on Job without taking breath. Job's trigger-arm swung loose from the elbow, and Dick was glad. He looked on the big man sitting in the snow and crying like a frightened baby, and then he looked on the other man lying still in the moonlight.

"I fancy you'll wait till I'm ready to strap that," he said, and ran over to Tempest's side.

How or when he knew it he could not tell. But he understood why Tempest had taken the bullet which should have been his. Tempest knew this thing which Dick had done to him; and because Dick had exacted the sacrifice of his love, Tempest, following Biblical methods, had offered his life also. Not even in the first moment did he do Tempest the dishonour of thinking that he had sought a way