“If I was a man, Jed Hawkins—­you’d run!”

He took a step toward her.

“You’d run,” she repeated, meeting him squarely, and taking a tighter grip of her stick.  “I ain’t ever seen you hit anything but a woman, an’ a girl, or some poor animal that didn’t dare bite back.  You’re a coward, Jed Hawkins, a low-down, sneakin,’ whiskey-sellin’ coward—­and you oughta die!”

Even Peter sensed the cataclysmic change that had come in this moment between the two big rocks.  It held something in the air, like the impending crash of dynamite, or the falling down of the world.  He forgot himself, and looked up at his mistress, a wonderful, slim little thing standing there at last unafraid before the future—­and in his dog heart and soul a part of the truth came to him, and he planted his big feet squarely in front of Jed Hawkins, and snarled at him as he had never snarled before in his life.

And the bootlegger, for a moment, was stunned, For a while back he had humored the girl a little, to hold her in peace and without suspicion until Mooney was able to turn over her body-money.  After that—­after he had delivered her to the other’s shack—­it would all be up to Mooney, he figured.  And this was what had come of his peace-loving efforts!  She was taking advantage of him, defying him, spying upon him—­the brat he had fed and brought up for ten years!  Her beauty as she stood there did not hold him back.  It was punishment she needed, a beating, a hair-pulling, until there was no breath left in her impudent body.  He sprang forward, and Peter let out a wild yip as he saw Nada raise her stick.  But she was a moment too slow.  The man’s hand caught it, and his right hand shot forward and buried itself in the thick, soft mass of her hair.

It was then that something broke loose in Peter.  For this day, this hour, this minute the gods of destiny had given him birth.  All things in the world were blotted out for him except one—­the six inches of naked shank between the bootlegger’s trouser-leg and his shoe.  He dove in.  His white teeth, sharp as stiletto-points, sank into it.  And a wild and terrible yell came from Jed Hawkins as he loosed the girl’s hair.  Peter heard the yell, and his teeth sank deeper in the flesh of the first thing he had ever hated.  It was the girl, more than Peter, who realized the horror of what followed.  The man bent down and his powerful fingers closed round Peter’s scrawny neck, and Peter felt his wind suddenly shut off, and his mouth opened.  Then Jed Hawkins drew back the arm that held him, as he would have drawn it back to fling a stone.