Page:Weird Tales Volume 44 Number 7 (1952-11).djvu/22

 foot. Inch by painful inch, gasping and sobbing, she crawled toward the break in the rocks where Jet still sat immobile, watching her. It couldn't have been Charles, she thought dully. Jet's still here. Something in the dog's implacable pose struck her then with a cold thrill of fear. Against the red afterglow, between black enormous rocks, she seemed to loom huge against the sky.

Her last reserve of strength carried Moira to the opening in the rocks, at the very second that she knew she could have kept up no longer. Crying weakly with relief, she started to pull herself out of the water.

With a savage snarl, the big dog leaped suddenly to its feet, every hair bristling. Moira made one last attempt to clutch at the ledge, and the dog sprang. Recoiling, she lost her grasp.

"Charles!" she screamed again, and knew it was no use. There was only Jet, and Jet had won again. Once more Jet would have Charles to herself.

In the sharp clarity of imminent death it all became plain to her. As she felt herself sinking, she looked again, with a detached and wondering vision, at that black featureless outline between the rocks. And looked again in anguished intensity, and clawed again at the rock. For another figure was suddenly silhouetted against the fading light—a sturdy figure, with a stout club which rose and fell as the dog whirled around just a second too late.

Mrs. Bunty dropped to her knees at the water's edge.

"Woman dear, catch hold my hand!" she gasped, forgetting decorum for the first time in her life. "God, I thought I was too late! I thought that black beast had done for you!"

For a second Moira hung helpless and limp from Mrs. Bunty's firm hold on her arms.

"I can't!" she whispered. "I can't make it!"

"You've got to!" Mrs. Bunty's voice was urgent. "Now!"

She pulled with a will, and slowly, with pain that seemed breaking her body in two, Moira crawled out of the water, averting her eyes from the thing that had been Jet, and lay utterly spent on the wet rock. Mrs. Bunty was breathing hard from her exertion, and for a moment neither of them spoke.

"Something seemed to turn me back," said Mrs. Bunty. "A—just a kind of feeling, when I was almost half-way home. I just knew, Like as if a voice had spoke, I shouldn't have left you alone with that dog."

A sudden noise sounded above the fret of the waves, the hoot of an auto horn.

"Charles!" Moira gasped. She raised herself painfully from the rock. "Oh, Mrs. Bunty, what will we do?" Their eyes met.

"He'll never believe it!" Moira whispered. "Quick, Mrs. Bunty—push Jet into the pool! We've got to tell him—what can we tell him?"

There was a splash, as Jet's body slid gently into the water. Mrs. Bunty knelt and washed the blood from tire spot by the water's edge. Washing the club, she shoved it in a little recess in the rocks and pulled the scanty bushes across the opening.

"I found you in the pool together, madam," she said rapidly. "Jet was trying to save you—trying to save you, do you hear? The master would never believe what happened, not on our Bible oaths. He's deep, he'd cover it up—but all his life he'd hold it against you. Jet jumped in to save you, and a wave threw her against a rock and killed her, the same wave that nigh killed you."

"She died a heroine," murmured Moira, her eyes brightening. "Yes, he'll believe that!" Her mouth twisted with the irony of it. "I'll be hearing about it for the rest of my life!"

"I forgot something, we'll say, and come back and was a little worried to find you gone. Pulled you out just in time, and that's God's truth. When he sees the look of you, all covered with blood, and knows how close he was to losing you—trust me, madam, it's not Jet he'll be thinking of!"

"Moira!" called Charles, from the top of the path. "Moira darling, where are you? Where's Jet?"

Wildly, sobbingly, rocking back and forth, Moira began to laugh.

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