Blood on the Range. Eli Colter

      “But he won’t!” Doe interrupted. “A bad horse piled him and broke his left hip. He’ll have to stay there in the hospital for months. We just got word.”

      “That’s bad, Doe! Bad for him, and for us, right now when we need him too——” Hardin cut himself short, as there came from the night outside the drumming sound of a horse’s hoofs, approaching at a hard gallop. He turned his head swiftly to stare at Gaston.

      They sat rigid, listening. The wildly running horse reached the lane, raced down it, and came to a staggering blowing halt in the rear yard near the house. The sound of a man’s spur chains clinked through the silent night, as the rider of the horse heaved himself from the saddle and advanced toward the house.

      Hardin sprang to his feet, half drawing his right-hand gun. He leaped to the door and swung it open.

      Guy Shawnessy lurched up the back steps and staggered across the porch. Hardin fell back a step as the sheriff stumbled into the room.

      Shawnessy was hatless. His thick, blond, curling hair was matted with blood that had oozed from a wound in the scalp above his right temple. His pale face was streaked with blood and grime, drawn with pain and weariness.

      His clothes were torn in numerous places and caked with dirt. His left arm hung limp. The shirt over his left shoulder was bullet-torn and dark with blood. There was a bullet hole in the top of his right boot, but the bullet which had made it had barely scored the skin.

      In his arm he held Mary Silver. The right arm gripped her against his chest. Her lax body was further supported by the suspenders he had removed and tied about his body and hers for the purpose.

      Her clothes were soiled and torn, also, spotted with blood from his wounds, but she was uninjured. Her face was drawn and white under the grime of dust and sweat. Racked by terror, vitiated by exhaustion, she was as soundly asleep as a person drugged.

      Doe gaped at them, with appalled eyes, utterly unconscious of his scant garb.

      Shawnessy turned a glassy gaze on Hardin. He seemed to be striving fully to convince himself that he had reached his destination at last. “Take her, Gage. Quick, man!”

      Hardin dropped his half-drawn gun into its holster, slammed shut the door, and leaped to meet Shawnessy’s swaying figure, all in one coordinated movement. He jerked asunder the suspenders that held Mary Silver’s knees to the sheriff’s side.

      As he took her unconscious body into his arms, Shawnessy, relieved of the dead weight, closed his eyes and fell forward on his face.