Scot returned from the Dodson camp one day, lips close set and eyes dangerously lit with a smouldering fire. Mollie was nursing a black eye. She had fallen, she told him, against the corner of the wagon. He had not believed her when she told this tremulous lie. But Vicky had settled the matter past doubt. She was waiting for him in a little gulch near the camp, waiting to tell him in a burst of impotent childish passion that Dodson had beaten Mollie because she did not have supper ready for him when he came home hours after the fire was out. As it chanced, McClintock met the ne’er-do-well a hundred yards farther down the gulch. Dodson was, for a wonder, sober. He had no money of his own and he had been unable to wheedle many free drinks from miners. At sight of the gambler Dodson scowled. He had plenty of reasons for disliking Scot. He nursed a continuous spleen because he would not let him get at the money collected for the baby. His pride suffered at accepting favours from a man who scorned him. He was jealous of the interest McClintock must have aroused in his “woman,” Mollie Dodson. No matter how he stormed and sneered at her he could not keep her mind from a comparison of the men who just now were most present in her life, and in that silent judgment he knew he must play a sorry part. The bummer, to use the phrase of the day, would have passed without speaking. A sulky dignity was the rôle he judged the most effective. But Scot caught him by the coat lapel and swung him sharply round. “I’m going to teach you not to lay a hand on—on a woman,” McClintock said, his voice thick with suppressed passion. Dodson’s thin mask of offended dignity fell away instantly. He tried to back off, snarling at the man whose steel grip held him. “She’s been tellin’ lies on me, has she?” he retorted, showing his teeth. “Mrs. Dodson says she fell against the wagon. I don’t believe it. You struck her, you yellow wolf. Right now I’m going to give you the thrashing of your life.” The eyes of the loafer flashed fear. “You lemme go,” he panted, trying to break away. “Don’t you dass touch me. Think I don’t know about you an’ her? Think I’m a plumb idjit?” An open-handed smash across the mouth stopped his words. He made a swift pass with his right hand. Scot’s left shot out and caught the wrist, twisting it back and up. A bullet was flung into the sky; then, under the urge of a pain which leaped from wrist to shoulder of the tortured arm, the revolver dropped harmlessly to the ground. “Goddlemighty, you’re breakin’ my arm,” Dodson shrieked, sagging at the knees as he gave to the pressure. Scot sent home a stiff right. “You’ll be nursing a black eye from that to-morrow,” he said evenly. The craven in Dodson came out at once. He tried to escape punishment by whining and begging. He promised anything the other man might demand of him. He made an attempt to fling himself to the ground and cover up. McClintock set his teeth and went through with the job.