He pushed aside the ponderous armchair which stood beside him at the head of the table.

“Say,” shouted the sheriff, paler than ever now, “what are you accusing me of?”

“Murder!” thundered Bull Hunter.

The roar of Bull’s voice chained every one in his place, the sheriff with staring eyes, and Jud in the act of raising his hand.

“I’ll jail you for slander!” said the sheriff, fighting to assurance and knowing that he was betrayed by his pallor and by the icy perspiration which he felt on his forehead.

“Anderson,” said Bull, “I seen the marks of them iron heels of yours on the rock!”

That was a little thing, of course.  As evidence it would not have convinced the most prejudiced jury in the world, but Sheriff Anderson was not weighing small points.  Into his mind leaped one image—­the whiteness of those rocks on which he had stood and the indelible mark his heels must have made against that whiteness.  He was lost, he felt, and he acted on the impulse to fight for his life.

One last glance he cast at the six listeners, and in their wide-eyed interest he read his own damnation.  Then Anderson whirled and leaped for his belt with the guns.

Out of six throats came six yells of fear; there was a noise of chairs being pushed back and a wild scramble to find safety under the table.  Jud, risking a moment’s delay, knocked the chimney off the lamp before he dived.  The flame leaped once and went out, but the pale moonshine poured through the window and filled the room with a weird play of shadows.

What Bull Hunter saw was not the escape of the sheriff, but a sudden blind rage against everything and everybody.  It was a passion that set him trembling through all of his great body.  One touch of trust, one word of encouragement had been enough to make him a giant to tear up the stump in the presence of Jessie and his cousins; how far more mighty he was in the grip of this new emotion, this rage.

His own gun was far away, but guns were not what he wanted.  They were uncongenial toys to his great hands.  Instead, he reached down and caught up that massive chair of oak, built to resist time, built to bear even such a bulk as that of Bull Hunter with ease.  Yet he caught it up in one hand, weighed it behind his head at the full limit of his extended arm, and then, bending forward, he catapulted the great missile down the length of the table.  It hit the lamp on the way and splintered it to small bits, its momentum unimpeded.  Hurtling on across the table it shot at the sheriff as he whirled with his guns in his hands.

Fast as the chair shot forward, the hand of the sheriff was faster still.  Bull saw the big guns twitch up, silver in the moonshine.  They exploded in one voice, as if the flying mass of wood were an animate object.  Then the sheriff was struck and hurled crashing along the floor.

CHAPTER 9