It seemed that Lucy located the gun without turning her eyes away from Joel’s.  She gathered all her force—­rolled over swiftly—­again—­got her hands on the gun just as Creech leaped like a panther upon her.  His weight crushed her flat—­his strength made her hand-hold like that of a child.  He threw the gun aside.  Lucy lay face down, unable to move her body while he stood over her.  Then he struck her, not a stunning blow, but just the hard rap a cruel rider gives to a horse that wants its own way.  Under that blow Lucy’s spirit rose to a height of terrible passion.  Still she did not lose her cunning; the blow increased it.  That blow showed Joel to be crazy.  She might outwit a crazy man, where a man merely wicked might master her.

Creech tried to turn her.  Lucy resisted.  And she was strong.  Resistance infuriated Creech.  He cuffed her sharply.  This action only made him worse.  Then with hands like steel claws he tore away her blouse.

The shock of his hands on her bare flesh momentarily weakened Lucy, and Creech dragged at her until she lay seemingly helpless before him.

And Lucy saw that at the sight of her like this something had come between Joel Creech’s mad motives and their execution.  Once he had loved her—­desired her.  He looked vague.  He stroked her shoulder.  His strange eyes softened, then blazed with a different light.  Lucy divined that she was lost unless she could recall his insane fury.  She must begin that terrible fight in which now the best she could hope for was to make him kill her quickly.

Swift and vicious as a cat she fastened her teeth in his arm.  She bit deep and held on.  Creech howled like a dog.  He beat her.  He jerked and wrestled.  Then he lifted her, and the swing of her body tore the flesh loose from his arm and broke her hold.  Lucy half rose, crawled, plunged for the gun.  She got it, too, only to have Creech kick it out of her hand.  The pain of that brutal kick was severe, but when he cut her across the bare back with the rope she shrieked out.  Supple and quick, she leaped up and ran.  In vain!  With a few bounds he had her again, tripped her up.  Lucy fell over the dead body of the father.  Yet even that did not shake her desperate nerve.  All the ferocity of a desert-bred savage culminated in her, fighting for death.

Creech leaned down, swinging the coiled rope.  He meant to do more than lash her with it.  Lucy’s hands flashed up, closed tight in his long hair.  Then with a bellow he jerked up and lifted her sheer off the ground.  There was an instant in which Lucy felt herself swung and torn; she saw everything as a whirling blur; she felt an agony in her wrists at which Creech was clawing.  When he broke her hold there were handfuls of hair in Lucy’s fists.

She fell again and had not the strength to rise.  But Creech was raging, and little of his broken speech was intelligible.  He knelt with a sharp knee pressing her down.  He cut the rope.  Nimbly, like a rider in moments of needful swiftness, he noosed one end of the rope round her ankle, then the end of the other piece round her wrist.  He might have been tying up an unbroken mustang.  Rising, he retained hold on both ropes.  He moved back, sliding them through his hands.  Then with a quick move he caught up Sage King’s bridle.