With a curse the man jerked his leg clear, Michael’s teeth ribboning flesh and trousers.

“Good boy, Michael!” Harley applauded from where he lay helplessly pinioned under his horse.  “Hey!  Michael!” he continued, lapsing back into beche-de-mer, “chase ’m that white fella marster to hell outa here along bush!”

“I’ll kick your head off for that,” the man gritted at Harley through his teeth.

Savage as were his acts and utterance, the man was nearly ready to cry.  The long pursuit, his hand against all mankind and all mankind against him, had begun to break his stamina.  He was surrounded by enemies.  Even youths had risen up and peppered his back with birdshot, and beef cattle had trod him underfoot and smashed his rifle.  Everything conspired against him.  And now it was a dog that had slashed down his leg.  He was on the death-road.  Never before had this impressed him with such clear certainty.  Everything was against him.  His desire to cry was hysterical, and hysteria, in a desperate man, is prone to express itself in terrible savage ways.  Without rhyme or reason he was prepared to carry out his threat to kick Harley Kennan to death.  Not that Kennan had done anything to him.  On the contrary, it was he who had attacked Kennan, hurling him down on the road and breaking his leg under his horse.  But Harley Kennan was a man, and all mankind was his enemy; and, in killing Kennan, in some vague way it appeared to him that he was avenging himself, at least in part, on mankind in general.  Going down himself in death, he would drag what he could with him into the red ruin.

But ere he could kick the man on the ground, Michael was back upon him.  His other calf and trousers’ leg were ribboned as he tore clear.  Then, catching Michael in mid-leap with a kick that reached him under the chest, he sent him flying through the air off the road and down the slope.  As mischance would have it, Michael did not reach the ground.  Crashing through a scrub manzanita bush, his body was caught and pinched in an acute fork a yard above the ground.

“Now,” the man announced grimly to Harley, “I’m going to do what I said.  I’m just going to kick your head clean off.”

“And I haven’t done a thing to you,” Harley parleyed.  “I don’t so much mind being murdered, but I’d like to know what I’m being murdered for.”

“Chasing me for my life,” the man snarled, as he advanced.  “I know your kind.  You’ve all got it in for me, and I ain’t got a chance except to give you yours.  I’ll take a whole lot of it out on you.”

Kennan was thoroughly aware of the gravity of his peril.  Helpless himself, a man-killing lunatic was about to kill him and to kill him most horribly.  Michael, a prisoner in the bush, hanging head-downward in the manzanita from his loins squeezed in the fork, and struggling vainly, could not come to his defence.

The man’s first kick, aimed at Harley’s face, he blocked with his forearm; and, before the man could make a second kick, Jerry erupted on the scene.  Nor did he need encouragement or direction from his love-master.  He flashed at the man, sinking his teeth harmlessly into the slack of the man’s trousers at the waist-band above the hip, but by his weight dragging him half down to the ground.