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 platform. "I throwed it into him just as he was steppin' on the platform, his damn gun in his hand."

Zora looked at the boaster, a surge of hate rising so hot in her it was like a misty veil before her eyes. She did not know anything about the merits of Bill Dunham's case, nor even give it a thought; only that he was dead or dying, and this braggart stood there on the edge of the track, not five feet from Dunham's head, blowing that he had brought him down. She jerked her gun with a choking exclamation and slung it in his face.

Somebody struck her arm as she fired, the shot going safely over the fellow's head. They grappled with her, the man who had escaped his dues by a hand's breadth backing off, whiter around the gills than Bill Dunham, even in his extremity, was.

"Take that gun away from that hellion!" he said, clawing and backing to open a lane of retreat through the crowd.

Somebody had hold of her wrist; she couldn't lift the gun for another shot at him, hard as she struggled to break loose. They held her tight and took her gun away.

"You ought to know better than to go shootin' around in a crowd that way, lady," the man who held her arm said. He was a whiskered, fatherly man; he looked at her with a sort of injured reproach.

"Give me that gun!" she stormed, struggling, striking, kicking, even trying to bite the hard raspy hand that held her as fast as if her arm was set in a stone wall.