Gully apparently either did not realize the situation or did not care.  With face convulsed with passion, beyond all semblance to a human being, he crouched and rushed the party on the eastern side of his wrecked home, firing as he came.  Badly hit, several of his assailants were speedily hor de combat, among them, Hardy and McCullough.  The whole incident happened in quicker time than it takes to relate.

Then, from out the startled crowd there sprang a man.  It was Slavin.  His hour had come.  There was something appalling in the spectacle of the two gigantic men rushing thus upon each other.  Suddenly, Gully tripped over a log and fell headlong, his deadly gun flying from his grasp.  With a sort of uncanny, cat-like agility he scrambled to his feet and strove to recover his weapon.  He was a fraction of a second too late.  A kick from Slavin sent it whirling several yards away, and the next moment the opponents were upon each other.

At the first onslaught the issue of the combat seemed doubtful.  The ex-sheriff was no wrestler like Slavin, but he speedily demonstrated that he was a boxer, as well as a gun-man.  Cleverly eluding the grasp of his powerful assailant for the moment, twice he rocked Slavin’s head back with fearful left and right swings to the jaw.  With a bestial rumbling in his throat, the sergeant countered with a pile-driving punch to the other’s heart; then, ducking his head to avoid further punishment, he grappled with the murderer.  Roaring inarticulately in their Berserker rage, the pair bore a closer resemblance to a bear and a gorilla than men.

Once in that terrible grip, however, Gully, big and powerful man though he was, had not the slightest chance with a wrestler of Slavin’s ability.  Shifting rapidly from one cruel hold to another the huge Irishman presently whirled his antagonist up over his hip and sent him crashing to the ground, face downwards.  Then, kneeling upon the neck of his struggling and blaspheming victim, he held him down until handcuffs finally imprisoned the enormous wrists, and leg-irons the ankles.

The grim, long-protracted duel was over at last.  But at lamentable cost.  Two men killed outright, and five badly wounded had been the deadly toll exacted by Gully in his last, desperate stand.

The rays of the early morning shone upon a strange and solemn scene.  Gully, guarded by two constables, was seated upon the stone foundation that marked the site of his wrecked dwelling.  Head in hands, sunk in a sort of stupor, his attitude portrayed that of a man from whom all earthly hope had fled.  Some distance away lay the wounded men, being roughly, but sympathetically attended to by their comrades.  All were awaiting now the arrival of the coroner, and also the means of transportation which the inspector had ordered MacDavid to requisition for them.

Presently came those who reverently bore the dead upon hastily-constructed stretchers.  Silently Inspector Kilbride indicated a spot near the fringe of brush; and there, side by side, they laid them down, covering the bodies with a blanket dragged from the debris of the shattered dwelling.