Page:Randall Parrish - The Red Mist.djvu/370

 350 know you—you trusted yourself to me—you are under my protection."

There was no answer; perhaps I had said too much. I stood waiting, other words burning on my tongue. God, I loved her—but I could not understand; could not venture to break the mystery of that silence. Suddenly a volley roared out, startling in the stillness, the simultaneous crash of fifty muskets, the speeding bullets thudding into wood. I heard one cry of agony—a shout of command—the sharp bark of carbines—then a grim, threatening yelp of voices. One leap brought me to the window, with gun-barrel thrust forward across the sill. The two black shadows were disintegrating, breaking up, the units spreading out like an opening fan, in headlong rush toward the door at the south corner. There was no firing, no flash of powder, just that wild yelping, as though a pack of wolves smelt blood, and that reckless dash across the moonlit open. I saw figures, not faces, a gleaming of poised weapons, a huddle of leaping bodies.

"Fire!" I roared, my voice rising above the hideous din. "Give it to them!" and pulled trigger.

I have no clear knowledge of what followed—it was all so quickly over with; a mere mad moment crowded with vague glimpses, vanishing and