the weight of a second assailant he was crushed to the snow, his pistol slipped from his grasp, and two great hands choked a despairing cry from his throat.  He saw a face over him, distorted with passion, a huge neck, eyes that named like angry garnets.  He struggled to free his pinioned arms, to wrench off the death-grip at his throat, but his efforts were like those of a child against a giant.  In a last terrible attempt he drew up his knees inch by inch under the weight of his enemy; it was his only chance, his only hope.  Even as he felt the fingers about his throat, sinking like hot iron into his flesh, and the breath slipping from his body, he remembered this murderous knee-punch taught to him by the rough fighters of the Inland Seas, and with all the life that remained in him he sent it crushing into the other’s abdomen.  It was a moment before he knew that it had been successful, before the film cleared from his eyes and he saw his assailant groveling in the snow.  He rose to his feet, dazed and staggering from the effect of the blow on his head and the murderous grip at his throat.  Half a pistol shot down the trail he saw indistinctly the twisting of black objects in the snow, and as he stared one of the objects came toward him.

“Do not fire, M’seur Howland,” he heard a voice call.  “It ees I—­Jean Croisset, a friend!  Blessed Saints, that was—­what you call heem?—­close heem?—­close call?”

The half-breed’s thin dark face came up smiling out of the white gloom.  For a moment Howland did not see him, scarcely heard his words.  Wildly he looked about him for the girl.  She was gone.

“I happened here—­just in time—­with a club,” continued Croisset.  “Come, we must go.”

The smile had gone from his face and there was a commanding firmness in the grip that fell on the young engineer’s arm.  Howland was conscious that things were twisting about him and that there was a strange weakness in his limbs.  Dumbly he raised his hands to his head, which hurt him until he felt as if he must cry out in his pain.

“The girl—­” he gasped weakly.

Croisset’s arm tightened about his waist.

“She ees gone!” Howland heard him say; and there was something in the half-breed’s low voice that caused him to turn unquestioningly and stagger along beside him in the direction of Prince Albert.

And yet as he went, only half-conscious of what he was doing, and leaning more and more heavily on his companion, he knew that it was more than the girl’s disappearance that he wanted to understand.  For as the blow had fallen on his head he was sure that he had heard a woman’s scream; and as he lay in the snow, dazed and choking, spending his last effort in his struggle for life, there had come to him, as if from an infinite distance, a woman’s voice, and the words that it had uttered pounded in his tortured brain now as his head dropped weakly against Croisset’s shoulder.

“Mon Dieu, you are killing him—­killing him!”