The other stood still.

James Rutlidge spoke again, his voice hoarse with emotion; “Listen to me, King.  It’s useless for me to deny what brought me here.  The trail you are following leads to Sibyl Andres.  You had her all summer.  I’ve got her now.  If you hadn’t stumbled onto the trail up there, I would have taken her out of the country, and you would never have seen her again.  I might have killed you before you saw me, but I couldn’t.  I’m not that kind.  Under the circumstances there is no possible compromise.  I’ll give you a fighting chance for your life and the girl.  I’ll take a fighting chance for my life and the girl.  Throw your gun out of reach and I’ll leave mine here.  We’ll meet on the ledge there.”

James Rutlidge was no coward.  Mr. Taine, also,—­it will be remembered,—­on the night of his death, boasted that he was game.

Without an instant’s hesitation, Aaron King unbuckled the belt that held his weapon and, turning, tossed it behind him, with the gun still in its holster.  At the other end of the ledge, James Rutlidge set his rifle behind the rock.

Deliberately, the two men removed their coats and threw aside their hats.  For a moment they stood eyeing each other.  Into Aaron King’s mind flashed the memory of that scene at the Fairlands depot, when, moved by the distress of the woman with the disfigured face, he had first spoken to the man who faced him now.  With startling vividness, the incidents of their acquaintance came to him in flash-like succession—­the day that Rutlidge had met Sibyl in the studio; the time of his visit to the camp in the sycamore grove; the night of the Taine banquet—­a hundred things that had strengthened the feeling of antagonism which had marked their first meeting.  And, through it all, he seemed to hear Conrad Lagrange saying that in his story of life this character’s name was “Sensual.”  The artist, in that instant, knew that this meeting was inevitable.

It was only for a moment that the two men—­who in their lives and characters represented forces so antagonistic—­stood regarding each other, each knowing that the duel would be—­must be—­to the death.  Deliberately, they started toward the center of the ledge.  Over their heads towered the great cliff.  A thousand feet below were the tops of the trees in the bottom of the gorge.  About them, on every hand, the silent, mighty hills watched—­the wild and lonely wilderness waited.

As they drew closer together, they moved, as wrestlers, warily—­crouching, silent, alert.  Stripped to their shirts and trousers, they were both splendid physical types.  James Rutlidge was the heavier, but Aaron King made up for his lack in weight by a more clean-cut, muscular firmness.

They grappled.  As two primitive men in a savage age might have met, bare handed, they came together.  Locked in each other’s arms, their limbs entwined, with set faces, tugging muscles, straining sinews, and taut nerves they struggled.  One moment they crushed against the rocky wall of the cliff—­the next, and they swayed toward the edge of the ledge and hung over the dizzy precipice.  With pounding hearts, laboring breath, and clenched teeth they wrestled.