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 straining breath was continuous, the ripping of coarse cloth an occasional interruption; but from the first, a spectator could not but have foreseen the end. The elder man was fighting in self-defence: the younger, he of the massive protruding jaw--a jaw now so prominent as to be a positive disfigurement--in unappeasable ferocity. Against him in that hour a very giant could not have held his own. Merely a glimpse of his face inspired terror. Again and again as they struggled his hand had clutched at the other's throat, but only to have his hold broken. At last, however, his adversary was weakening under the strain. Blind terror began to grip Tom Blair. At first a mere suggestion, then a horrible certainty, possessed him as to the identity of the relentless being who opposed him. Again the other's hand, like the creeping tentacle of an octopus, sought his throat, would not be stayed. He struggled with all his might against it, until it seemed the blood-vessels of his neck would burst, but still the hold tightened. He clutched at the long fingers desperately, bit at them, felt his breath coming hard. Freeing his own hand, he smashed with his fist again and again into that long thin face so near his own, knew that another tentacle had joined with the first, felt the impossibility of