“Are you ready?” he shouted.

“Ready!” cried Philip.

DeBar ran forward, shoulders hunched low, his pistol arm half extended, and Philip advanced to meet him.  At seventy paces, without stopping in his half trot, the outlaw fired, and his bullet passed in a hissing warning three feet over Philip’s head.  The latter had planned to hold his fire until he was sure of hitting the outlaw in the arm or shoulder, but a second shot from him, which seemed to Philip almost to nip him in the face, stopped him short, and at fifty paces he returned the fire.

DeBar ducked low and Philip thought that he was hit.

Then with a fierce yell he darted forward, firing as he came.

Again, and still a third time Philip fired, and as DeBar advanced, unhurt, after each shot, a cry of amazement rose to his lips.  At forty paces he could nip a four-inch bull’s-eye three times out of five, and here he missed a man!  At thirty he held an unbeaten record—­and at thirty, here in the broad open, he still missed his man!

He had felt the breath of DeBar’s fourth shot, and now with one cartridge each the men advanced foot by foot, until DeBar stopped and deliberately aimed at twenty paces.  Their pistols rang out in one report, and, standing unhurt, a feeling of horror swept over Philip as he looked at the other.  The outlaw’s arms fell to his side.  His empty pistol dropped to the snow, and for a moment he stood rigid, with his face half turned to the gloomy sky, while a low cry of grief burst from Philip’s lips.

In that momentary posture of DeBar he saw, not the effect of a wound only, but the grim, terrible rigidity of death.  He dropped his own weapon and ran forward, and in that instant DeBar leaped to meet him with the fierceness of a beast!

It was a terrible bit of play on DeBar’s part, and for a moment took Philip off his guard.  He stepped aside, and, with the cleverness of a trained boxer, he sent a straight cut to the outlaw’s face as he closed in.  But the blow lacked force, and he staggered back under the other’s weight, boiling with rage at the advantage which DeBar had taken of him.

The outlaw’s hands gripped at his throat and his fingers sank into his neck like cords of steel.  With a choking gasp he clutched at DeBar’s wrists, knowing that another minute—­a half-minute of that death clutch would throttle him.  He saw the triumph in DeBar’s eyes, and with a last supreme effort drew back his arm and sent a terrific short-arm punch into the other’s stomach.

The grip at his throat relaxed.  A second, a third, and a fourth blow, his arm traveling swiftly in and out, like a piston-rod, and the triumph in DeBar’s eyes was replaced by a look of agony.  The fingers at his throat loosened still more, and with a sudden movement Philip freed himself and sprang back a step to gather force for the final blow.

The move was fatal.  Behind him his heel caught in a snow-smothered log and he pitched backward with DeBar on top of him.