ght of his weapon. And then
from his own lips, even in his utter physical impotence, fell a cry of
wonder and amazement.

His enemy stood there in the sunlight, staring down at him with big,
dark eyes that were filled with horror. They were not the eyes of a
man. David Carrigan, in this most astounding moment of his life, found
himself looking up into the face of a woman.

III

For a matter of twenty seconds--even longer it seemed to Carrigan--the
life of these two was expressed in a vivid and unforgettable tableau.
One half of it David saw--the blue sky, the dazzling sun, the girl in
between. The pistol dropped from his limp hand, and the weight of his
body tottered on the crook of his under-elbow. Mentally and physically
he was on the point of collapse, and yet in those few moments every
detail of the picture was painted with a brush of fire in his brain.
The girl was bareheaded. Her face was as white as any face he had ever
seen, living or dead; her eyes were like pools that had caught the
reflection of fire; he saw the sheen of her hair, the poise of her
slender body--its shock, stupefaction, horror. He sensed these things
even as his brain wobbled dizzily, and the larger part of the picture
began to fade out of his vision. But her face remained to the last. It
grew clearer, like a cameo framed in an iris--a beautiful, staring,
horrified face with shimmering tresses of jet-black hair blowing about
it like a veil. He noticed the hair, that was partly undone as if she
had been in a struggle of some sort, or had been running fast against
the breeze that came up the river.

He fought with himself to hold that picture of her, to utter some word,
make some movement. But the power to see and to live died out of him.
He sank back with a queer sound in his throat. He did not hear the
answering cry from the girl as she flung herself, with a quick little
prayer for help, on her knees in the soft, white sand beside him. He
felt no movement when she raised his head in her arm and with her bare
hand brushed back his sand-littered hair, revealing where the bullet
had struck him. He did not know when she ran back to the river.

His first sensation was of a cool and comforting something trickling
over his burning temples and his face. It was water. Subconsciously he
knew that, and in the same way he began to think. But it was hard to
pull his thoughts together. They persisted in hopping about, like a lot
of sand-fleas