But he couldn't keep up with them. No more could he defend himself against them. He seemed to be fighting not one man but a dozen. And he could no longer think of face-saving, of honor, but only of escape.

Why, he's going to kill me, he thought wildly. I meant him no harm. I've given willful hurt to no man. I was just doing my job, just following orders, and for that he's going to kill me. Beat me to death in front of a hundred people.

Somehow more terrible than the certainty that he was about to die was the knowledge that Lord would probably not suffer for it: the murder would go unpunished. He, McBride, would be cited as in the wrong, and he, Lord, would go scot-free, an officer who had only done his duty, though perhaps too energetically.

McBride staggered into the street, flopped sprawling in the stinging dust. Fear maddened, fleeing the lengthening shadow of death, he scrambled to his feet again. He couldn't see; he was long past the point of coherent thinking. Dimly, he heard laughter, hoots of derision, but he could not read the racket properly. He could not grasp that Lord had withdrawn from the fight minutes ago, and that his leaden arms were flailing at nothing but the air.

He hated them too much to understand -- the people of this isolated law unto itself world that was Lord's world. This, he was sure, was the way they would act; laughing at a dying man, laughing as a man was beaten to death. And nothing would be done about it. Nothing unless & & &.