He stumbled over a
fallen chair, got up and plowed forward again, still with that dead
weight in his arms; collapsed again, and yet once more pulled himself to
his feet by the sheer strength of the dogged will in him.
So, at last, like a drunken man, he reeled into safety, the very hair
and clothes of the man on fire from the inferno he had just left.
A score of eager hands were ready to relieve him of his burden, to
support his lurching footsteps. Two of them were the strong brown hands
of the woman he loved more than any other on earth, the woman who had
galloped into sight just in time to see him come staggering from that
furnace with the body of the man who was his hated rival. It was her
soft hands that smothered the fire in his hair, that dragged the burning
coat from his back.
He smiled wanly, murmured "Valencia," and fainted in her arms.
Gordon clutched in his stiffened fingers a tin box blistered by the
heat.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE TIN BOX
Dick Gordon lay on a bed in a sunny south room at the Corbett place.
He was swathed in bandages, and had something the appearance of a relic
of the Fourth of July, as our comic weeklies depict Young America the
day after that glorious occasion. But, except for one thing which he had
on his mind, the Coloradoan was as imperturbably gay as ever.
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