Page:The Cross Pull.pdf/211

 only sound was a sharp, gasping breath as his left hand reached for his other gun.

Flash would have surely died as he darted back to the attack if the man on the trail had not gone into action as suddenly as Harte himself. His eye had caught the charging gray streak on the slope and with it the man rising from behind the log. He sprang six feet from the girl, his hand thrust inside his coat for the gun which was slung under his left armpit.

Harte’s steady nerve did not desert him even in the face of this emergency. Instead of shooting Flash, he turned the gun in his left hand on the man below and crooked his crippled right arm to protect his throat from the wolf’s fierce lunge. Two shots roared together and even as Flash drove his teeth into Harte’s shoulder the man collapsed behind the log. As Flash darted away he saw the other man sag limply and crumple down on the trail.

Fiash took shelter behind a windfall. Both men lay still and quiet. He heard Betty sob as she knelt beside the older man. Then he heard Moran bounding toward them from the cabin, crashing through the underbrush and hurdling fallen logs. He moved farther away. He knew