As for escape, there was simply no chance—­it was impossible.  On three sides the lake, still beautiful, though the colour was fading from it, effectively blocked their way.  On the fourth and narrowest side there was the shoulder of rocks, not only blocking them, but affording a perfect shelter for Nash and his men, for they did not doubt that it was he.

“They think they’ve got us,” said a fiercely exultant voice beside him, “but we ain’t started to make all the trouble we’re goin’ to make.”

Life came back to him as he looked at her.  She was trembling with excitement, but it was the tremor of eagerness, not the unmistakable sick palsy of fear.  He drew out a large handkerchief of fine, white linen and tied it to a long splinter of wood which he tore away from one of the rotten boards.

“Go out with this,” he said.  “They aren’t after you, Sally.  This is west of the Rockies, thank God, and a woman is safe with the worst man that ever committed murder.”

She said:  “D’you mean this, Anthony?”

“I’m trying to mean it.”

She snatched the stick and snapped it into small pieces.

“Does that look final, Anthony?”

He could not answer for a moment.  At last he said:  “What a woman you would have made for a wife, Sally Fortune; what a fine pal!”

But she laughed, a mirth not forced and harsh, but clear and ringing.

“Anthony, ain’t this better’n marriage?”

“By God,” he answered, “I almost think you’re right.”

For answer a bullet ripped through the right-hand wall and buried itself in a beam on the opposite side of the room.

“Listen!” she said.

There was a fresh crackle of guns, the reports louder and longer drawn.

“Rifles,” said Sally Fortune.  “I knew no bullet from a six-gun could carry like that one.”

The little, sharp sounds of splintering and crunching began everywhere.  A cloud of soot spilled down the chimney and across the hearth.  A furrow ploughed across the floor, lifting a splinter as long and even as if it had been grooved out by a machine.

“Look!” said Sally, “they’re firin’ breast high to catch us standing, and on the level of the floor to get us if we lie down.  That’s Nash.  I know his trademark.”

“From the back of the house we can answer them,” said Bard.  “Let’s try it.”

“Pepper for their salt, eh?” answered Sally, and they ran back through the old shack to the last room.

CHAPTER XXXIX

LEGAL MURDER

As Drew entered his bedroom he found the doctor in the act of restoring the thermometer to its case.  His coat was off and his sleeves rolled up to the elbow; he looked more like a man preparing to chop wood than a physician engaging in a struggle with death; but Dr. Young had the fighting strain.  Otherwise he would never have persisted in Eldara.