Columbine saw all this dazedly.  As Wilson fell she closed her eyes, fighting a faintness that almost overcame her.  She heard wrestling, threshing sounds, and sodden thumps, and a scattering of gravel.  These noises seemed at first distant, then grew closer.  As she gazed again with keener perception, Moore’s horse plunged away from the fiercely struggling forms that had rolled almost under his feet.  During the ensuing moments it was an equal battle so far as Columbine could tell.  Repelled, yet fascinated, she watched.  They beat each other, grappled and rolled over, first one on top, then the other.  But the advantage of being uppermost presently was Belllounds’s.  Moore was weakening.  That became noticeable more and more after each time he had wrestled and rolled about.  Then Belllounds, getting this position, lay with his weight upon Moore, holding him down, and at the same time kicking with all his might.  He was aiming to disable the cowboy by kicking the injured foot.  And he was succeeding.  Moore let out a strangled cry, and struggled desperately.  But he was held and weighted down.  Belllounds raised up now and, looking backward, he deliberately and furiously kicked Moore’s bandaged foot; once, twice, again and again, until the straining form under him grew limp.  Columbine, slowly freezing with horror, saw all this.  She could not move.  She could not scream.  She wanted to rush in and drag Jack off of Wilson, to hurt him, to kill him, but her muscles were paralyzed.  In her agony she could not even look away.  Belllounds got up astride his prostrate adversary and began to beat him brutally, swinging heavy, sodden blows.  His face then was terrible to see.  He meant murder.

Columbine heard approaching voices and the thumping of hasty feet.  That unclamped her cloven tongue.  Wildly she screamed.  Old Bill Belllounds appeared, striding off the porch.  And the hunter Wade came running down the path.

“Dad! he’s killing Wilson!” cried Columbine.

“Hyar, you devil!” roared the rancher.

Jack Belllounds got up.  Panting, disheveled, with hair ruffled and face distorted, he was not a pleasant sight for even the father.  Moore lay unconscious, with ghastly, bloody features, and his bandaged foot showed great splotches of red.

“My Gawd, son!” gasped Old Bill.  “You didn’t pick on this hyar crippled boy?”

The evidence was plain, in Moore’s quiet, pathetic form, in the panting, purple-faced son.  Jack Belllounds did not answer.  He was in the grip of a passion that had at last been wholly unleashed and was still unsatisfied.  Yet a malignant and exultant gratification showed in his face.

“That—­evens us—­up, Moore,” he panted, and stalked away.

By this time Wade reached the cowboy and knelt beside him.  Columbine came running to fall on her knees.  The old rancher seemed stricken.

“Oh—­Oh! it was terrible—­” cried Columbine.  “Oh—­he’s so white—­and the blood—­”