"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. Already the subtle atmosphere of sickness had come upon the room. The shades of the windows were drawn evenly, and low down, so that the increasing brightness of the morning could only temper, not wholly dismiss the shadows. Night is the only reality of the sick-bed; the day is only a long evening, a waiting for the utter dark. The doctor's little square satchel of instruments, vials, and bandages lay open on the table; he had changed the apartment as utterly as he had changed his face by putting on great, horn-rimmed spectacles. They gave an owl-like look to him, an air of omniscience. It seemed as if no mortal ailment could persist in the face of such wisdom. "Well?" whispered Drew. "You can speak out, but not loudly," said the doctor calmly. "He's delirious; the fever is getting its hold." "What do you think?" "Nothing. The time hasn't come for thinking." He bent his emotionless eye closer on the big rancher. "You," he said, "ought to be in bed this moment." Drew waved the suggestion aside. "Let me give you a sedative," added Young.