He halted and his great chest heaved with the effort
of a mighty breath, his whole body leaned a bit forward. "Tell me what
you want here, and tell me quick, or by the eternal I'll fill you so
full of holes your own mother wouldn't recognise you."

One by one the two repeaters shifted, shifted until they were focussed
upon a spot midway between the belt and the rolling collar of the
flannel shirt. "I'm listening, How Landor."

At last the moment had come, the climax, the supreme instant in the
career of those eight men in that tiny weather-boarded room. No need to
tell seven of them at least that it was a moment of life or death. If
something, something which seemed inevitable, happened, if one of those
curling, itching fingers on the triggers tightened, if but once that
took place, their lives were not worth the wording of a curse. If once
again that black-visaged, passion-mastered human smelt powder, there
would be no end while a target had power to move, while a tiny gleaming
cylinder remained in the row within his belt. This they knew; and man by
man, as the Creator made them, revealed the knowledge. The jaws of Bob
Manning were quiet now, but the old eyes blazed from beneath their
sockets like the eyes of a grey timber wolf, the centre of a howling
pack. Next to him lank Wagner stood, waiting with closed lips; his lips
as grey as those of the dead man on the floor. Rank Judge had not moved,
but the harness on his wooden stump creaked softly as his weight shifted
from leg to leg. Fat Buck Walker was perspiring almost grotesquely, like
an earthenware pitcher. Great drops hung from his chin, from his
uptilted nose, and his cotton shirt was dark. Slim Simpson, white
before, was like a corpse; only his great boyish eyes stared out, as a
somnambulist stares, as one hypnotised. Last of all, at the end of the
line was the stranger from the East, representative of another world.
Piteous, horrible, the others had been; but he--but for his clothes, his
most intimate friend would not have recognised him at that moment. In
him, blind, racking terror was personified. To have saved his soul he
could not keep still, and his heavy walking shoes grated as they
shuffled on the rough floor. He had bitten his lip and the blood stood
in his mouth and trickled down, down his clean-shaven face. His eyes,
like those of Slim Simpson, were abnormally wide, but shifting
constantly in a hopeless search for a place of concealment, of safety.