“Coward!” said the mountaineer, amazed.  “You call me that?”

“The man who shoots another in cold blood, giving him no chance for his life, deserves no better name.”

This appealed to Lorey.  So had his father died—­at the hands of one who killed him in cold blood, giving him no chance for his life.  “You shan’t die callin’ me that!” he cried.  He leaned his rifle against a nearby rock, threw his knife upon the ground beside it, pulled off his coat, and thus, unarmed, advanced upon his enemy.  “We’re ekal now,” he said with grim intensity, and pointed to the chasm through which ran the stream which made Madge Brierly’s refuge an island.  “That gully air a hundred feet straight down,” he said, “an’ its bottom air kivered with rocks.  When we’re through, your body or mine’ll lay there.  Air you ready?”

Holton, tense with excitement, was watching every move of the two men from his hidden vantage point.  Upon his face was the expression of an animal of prey.

“Ready!” said Frank, quietly.

It was a terrific struggle which ensued.  The trained muscles of the lowland athlete were matched against the lithe thews of the mountaineer so evenly that, for a time, there was doubt of what the outcome might be.  Holton, watching, watching, thrilled with every second of it.  Little he cared which man won; the best thing which possibly could happen, for his own good, he reflected, would be that both should crash down to the bottom of the gully locked in one of their bear-hugs, to fall together on the jagged rocks below.  The fierce breathing of the contestants, the shuffle of their struggling feet upon the ground, the occasional involuntary groan from one man or the other as his adversary crushed him in embrace so painful that an exclamation could not be suppressed, were all music to the ears of the old man behind the rock.  Both youths were perils to him.  Let them kill each other.  He would be the gainer, whatever the outcome of the battle.

Suddenly Frank’s foot slipped on a rolling pebble.  Instantly Lorey had taken advantage of the mishap, and, with a quick wrench, thrown him crashing to the earth.  He lay there, scarcely breathing, utterly unconscious.

The mountaineer bent over him, ready to meet the first sign of revival with renewed attack, his bloodshot eyes strained on the face of the young man upon the ground.  Then, anxious to be satisfied that his prostrate enemy was not feigning, he knelt by him and peered into his face, placed his hand upon his chest above his heart, felt his pulse with awkward fingers.  He wondered, now, if he had not killed him, outright, for Frank’s head had struck the ground with a terrific impact.  But Layson’s nostrils soon began to dilate and contract with a spasmodic breathing.  He still lived.

Rendered careless by the excitement of the moment, Joe again yielded to the habit engendered by much solitude and spoke his thoughts aloud.