"I'll let go when you promise me to go into your house an' sit there an' keep quiet until I finish my work ... or, until you're molested." "Not after two years! Not after my dad...." Tears stood in the miner's eyes and he struck out viciously with his fists; then Bayard, thrusting his head forward, flung out his arms in a clinging, binding embrace and they went down on the trail, a tangle of limbs. Benny was no match in such a combat and in a trice he was on his face, arms held behind him and Bayard was lashing his wrists together with his bridle reins. "Stand up!" he said, sharply, when he had finished. He picked up the revolver and, with a hand under one of the bound arms, helped Benny to his feet. "I'll apologize later. I'll do anything. I came out here to prevent a killin', Benny, an' my work ain't done yet." The miner cursed him in a strained voice and the come and go of his breath was swift and irregular. He trembled violently. All the brooding he had experienced in the last months, all the strain of waiting he had known in the recent days, the conviction that his hour of accomplishment was at hand, and the sudden, overwhelming sense of physical helplessness that was now on him combined to render his anger that of a child. He attempted to hold back, but Bayard jerked him forward and, half dragged, half carried, he entered the kitchen of the cabin he had helped build, which had been stolen from him and which was now to be his prison at the moment when he had planned to make his title to the property good by killing.... Bayard, too, trembled, and his gray eyes glittered. He breathed through his lips and was conscious that his mouth was very dry. His movements were feverish and he handled Lynch as though he were so much insensate matter. Benny protested volubly, shouting and screaming and kicking, trying to resist with all his bodily force, but Bruce did not seem to hear him. He handled his captive with a peculiar abstraction in spite of the fact that they struggled constantly. Bayard kicked a chair away from the table, forced Lynch into it and holding him fast with one arm, drew the dangling bridle reins through the spindles of the back and lashed the miner's bound wrists there securely. "I can't help it, Benny," he said, hurriedly and earnestly, as he straightened. "You and I ... we'll have this out afterwards.... Your gun ... I'll leave it here,"--putting the weapon on top of a battered cupboard that stood against the wall behind Benny. "I'm goin' down to turn him back towards town, Benny.... I won't give you away; he won't know you're here, but I've got to do it myself. I can't let you kill him to-day.... I can't, because I'm to blame for his comin' here!"