he could smell the burning powder, sounded in his brain.  Within the circle of light from a kerosene lamp a great figure sank in a heap to a ranch house floor.  Against a background of unbroken white a trail of red blotches ended in the mutely pathetic figure of a prostrate dying horse—­a noble thoroughbred.  What varied horrors seethed in the watcher’s brain, crowded each other, recurred and again recurred!  How the long sinewy fingers itched to clutch that throat above the red neckerchief!  He could see the man’s face now, as, ignorant of danger so close, he was passing by fifty feet to the left, looking to neither side, doggedly heading toward the pass.  With the first motion since the figure had appeared, the hand of the watcher tightened on the rifle, raised it until its black muzzle peeped over the elevation of snow.  A pair of steady blue eyes gazed down the long barrel, brought the sights in line with a spot between the shoulders and the waist of the unsuspecting man, the trigger-finger tightened, almost—­

A preventing something, something not primal in the youth, gripped him, held him for a second motionless.  To kill a man from an ambush, even such a one as this without giving him a chance—­no, he could not quite do that.  But to take him by the throat with his bare hands, and then slowly, slowly—­

As noiselessly as the rifle had raised, it dropped again.  The muscles of the long legs tightened as do those of a sprinter awaiting the starting pistol.  Then over the barricade, straight as a tiger leaps, shot a tall youth with steel-blue eyes, hatless, free of hand, straight for that listless, moving figure; the scattered snow flying to either side, the impact of the bounding feet breaking the previous stillness.  Tom Blair, the outlaw, could not but hear the rush.  Instinctively he turned, and in the fleeting second of that first glance Ben could see the face above the beard-line blanch.  As one might feel should the Angel of Death appear suddenly before him, Tom Blair must have felt then.  As though fallen from the sky, this avenging demon was upon him.  He had not time to draw a revolver, a knife; barely to swing the rifle in his hand upward to strike, to brace himself a little for the oncoming rush.

With a crash the two bodies came together.  Simultaneously the rifle descended, but for all its effectiveness it might have been a dead weed-stalk in the hands of a child.  It was not a time for artificial weapons, but only for nature’s own; a war of gripping, strangling hands, of tooth and nail.  Nearly of a size were the two men.  Both alike were hardened of muscle; both realized the battle was for life or death.  For a moment they remained upright, clutching, parrying for an advantage; then, locked each with each, they went to the ground.  Beneath and about them the fresh snow flew, filling their eyes, their mouths.  Squirming, straining, over and over they rolled; first the beardless man on top, then the bearded.  The sound of their