to the fast-running line of life.
Findlay's answering shot knocked dirt into Barrett's eyes. Blindly the wounded man fired again. To his surprise, no shot replied. He steadied himself with hand against the wall, and looked out, wondering dimly if his wild chance shot had hit.
But no; they had another plan for putting out the embers of life which they had discovered still warming their victim's heart. They were backing the load of hay toward the cabin; the smoke that blew ahead of it told that they had set it afire. They intended to block up the door with the burning load of hay and roast him like a grub in a nut.
Barrett believed it would be better to die in the open, fighting with his last breath, the trembling thread quickly cut by a bullet, than to lie huddled there in torture multiplied. He got to his knees, pistol in his left hand, his right arm numb from the wound in a numbness that seemed spreading, involving all his members.
He groped, with his pistol barrel until he found the bar across the door; pushed it, dislodged it. A moment 80, weaving upon his knees, he stood, like a seasick man upon a rolling ship. Then a darkness rose, and swept upward and over him, obscuring all the world.
Yet not insensible he lay there, smothered in this incomparable blackness, face to the floor. Some finer sense, some independent, projectible attribute, it seemed, stood sentinel outside that threatened door. Barrett saw, as a man in a dream, every turn of the wheels that brought the bulging end of the load of hay
