“I am going to kill you, M’seur,” he repeated again.

Howland dropped his arms, his fingers relaxed, and he forced his breath between his lips as if he were on the point of exhaustion.  There were still a few tricks in his science, and these, he knew, were about his last cards.  He backed into a corner, and Jean followed, his eyes flashing a steely light, his body growing more and more tense.

“Now, M’seur, I am going to kill you,” he said in the same low voice.  “I am going to break your neck.”

Howland backed against the wall, partly turned as if fearing the other’s attack, and yet without strength to repel it.  There was a contemptuous smile on Croisset’s lips as he poised himself for an instant.  Then he leaped in, and as his fingers gripped at the other’s throat Howland’s right arm shot upward in a deadly short-arm punch that caught his antagonist under the jaw.  Without a sound Jean staggered back, tottered for a moment on his feet, and fell to the floor.  Fifty seconds later he opened his eyes to find his hands bound behind his back and Howland standing at his feet.

“Mon Dieu, but that was a good one!” he gasped, after he had taken a long breath or two.  “Will you teach it to me, M’seur?”

“Get up!” commanded Howland.  “I have no time to waste, Croisset.”  He caught the Frenchman by the shoulders and helped him to a chair near the table.  Then he took possession of the other’s weapons, including the revolver which Jean had taken from him, and began to dress.  He spoke no word until he was done.

“Do you understand what is going to happen Croisset?” he cried then, his eyes blazing hotly.  “Do you understand that what you have done will put you behind prison bars for ten years or more?  Does it dawn on you that I’m going to take you back to the authorities, and that as soon as we reach the Wekusko I’ll have twenty men back on the trail of these friends of yours?”

A gray pallor spread itself over Jean’s thin face.

“The great God, M’seur, you can not do that!”

“Can not!” Howland’s fingers dug into the edge of the table.  “By this great God of yours, Croisset, but I will!  And why not?  Is it because Meleese is among this gang of cut-throats and murderers?  Pish, my dear Jean, you must be a fool.  They tried to kill me on the trail, tried it again in the coyote, and you came back here determined to kill me.  You’ve held the whip-hand from the first.  Now it’s mine.  I swear that if I take you back to the Wekusko we’ll get you all.”

“If, M’seur?”

“Yes—­if.”

“And that ’if’—­” Jean was straining against the table.

“It rests with you, Croisset.  I will bargain with you.  Either I shall take you back to the Wekusko, hand you over to the authorities and send a force after the others—­or you shall take me to Meleese.  Which shall it be?”

“And if I take you to Meleese, M’seur?”