So near that he could almost have touched them were Joanne and Marie, seated on the ground, with their backs toward him.  Their hands were tied behind them.  Their feet were bound with pannier ropes.  A dozen paces beyond them were Quade and Mortimer FitzHugh.

The two men were facing each other, a yard apart.  Mortimer FitzHugh’s face was white, a deadly white, and he was smiling.  His right hand rested carelessly in his hunting-coat pocket.  There was a sneering challenge on his lips; in his eyes was a look that Aldous knew meant death if Quade moved.  And Quade was like a great red beast ready to spring.  His eyes seemed bulging out on his cheeks; his great hands were knotted; his shoulders were hunched forward, and his mottled face was ablaze with passion.  In that moment’s dramatic tableau Aldous glanced about swiftly.  The men from the mountain had not returned.  He was alone with Quade and Mortimer FitzHugh.

Then FitzHugh spoke, very quietly, a little laughingly; but his voice trembled, and Aldous knew what the hand was doing in the hunting-coat pocket.

“You’re excited, Billy,” he said.  “I’m not a liar, as you’ve very impolitely told me.  And I’m not playing you dirt, and I haven’t fallen in love with the lady myself, as you seem to think.  But she belongs to me, body and soul.  If you don’t believe me—­why, ask the lady herself, Billy!”

As he spoke, he turned his sneering eyes for the fraction of a second toward Joanne.  The movement was fatal.  Quade was upon him.  The hand in the coat pocket flung itself upward, there followed a muffled report, but the bullet flew wide.  In all his life Aldous had never heard a sound like the roar that came from Quade’s throat then.  He saw Mortimer FitzHugh’s hand appear with a pistol in it, and then the pistol was gone.  He did not see where it went to.  He gripped his knife and waited, his heart beating with what seemed like smothered explosions as he watched for the opportunity which he knew would soon come.  He expected to see FitzHugh go down under Quade’s huge bulk.  Instead of that, a small, iron fist shot upward and Quade’s head went back as if broken from his neck.

FitzHugh sprang a step backward, and in the movement his heel caught the edge of a pack-saddle.  He stumbled, almost fell, and before he could recover himself Quade was at him again.  This time there was something in the red brute’s hand.  It rose and fell once—­and Mortimer FitzHugh reeled backward with a moaning cry, swayed for a second or two on his feet, and fell to the ground.  Quade turned.  In his hand was a bloody knife.  Madness and passion and the triumphant joy of a demon were in his face as he glared at his helpless prey.  As Aldous crouched lower his shoulder touched one of the saddles.  It slipped from the pile, one of the panniers followed it, and Quade saw him.  There was no longer reason for concealment, and as Quade stood paralyzed for a moment Aldous sprang forth into the space between him and Joanne.  He heard the cry that broke strangely from her lips but he did not turn his head.  He advanced upon Quade, his head lowered, the long skinning-knife gleaming in his hand.