away from around her feet, leaving her alone on a crumbling fragment.
"He killed two more men—they've got him!" the boy said, thrilling with pride in being able to give the important news. Then he tore along to get a look at the fallen hero.
Zora ran after him, her heart heavy with the bitterness of regret that she had not come sooner. She had heard the first burst of shooting, which she knew now must have been Dunham's last desperate effort to break through, when about a quarter of a mile away. If she had been five minutes sooner she might have saved his life. By that little margin everything that was precious to her had gone down in the general ruin of the world.
It looked like the whole town had arrived at the depot ahead of her. All interest pressed to a common point, where she knew Bill Dunham had fallen, against what odds, in what heroic defense, she could only surmise. She crowded among them—men and boys they were mainly, a woman here and there—with little exclamations of appeal, so stricken of face, so white and piteous, that they yielded her the precedence which seemed to be her right.
The station agent's wife, Mrs. Hoy, was holding up Dunham's head, trying to give him water out of a tin cup. He seemed limp and lifeless. There was blood on his lips; his shirt was soaked with blood. His head moved on the compassionate woman's arm, but his eyes were Closed, and the pallor of death was on his face.
"I got him, damn him!" a man was boasting as Zora broke through the press and came to the edge of the
