The blade slashed through the leather. Lynch floundered to his feet, free, alone in the room with the man he had deliberately planned to kill, and the overwhelming sense of impending achievement swept all caution from him. He stumbled a step or two forward after the suddenly parting of the straps set him free and then turned about to face Lytton, who stood beside the chair closing his knife. Behind the Easterner was the cupboard on which Bayard had placed Benny's gun, and the miner's first idea should have been to restrain himself, to keep on playing a strategic game, to move carefully, deliberately until he was armed and could safely show his hand. But such control was an impossibility. He faced Ned Lytton who stood there with an evil smile on his lips, and all the love for his dead father, all the outraged sense of property rights, all the brooding, the waiting, the accumulated tension caused something in him to swell until he felt a choking sensation, until the hate came into his face, until he drew his clenched fists upward and shook his head and bellowed and charged, madly, blindly, wanting only to have his hands on his enemy, to take his life as the first men took the lives of those who had done them wrong! The feel of perishing flesh in his palms ... that was what he wanted! With a shrill cry of fright, Lytton saw what happened. He saw the change come over the face, the body, the manner of this man before him, saw Lynch gather himself for the rush and, whipping his hand down to his stomach as he backed and tried to run, he clutched for the weapon that would defend him from this new foe. But the hand did not close on the pistol butt then. His wrist was caught in the clamp of incredibly powerful fingers that bound about it and wrenched it backward; the other hand was pinned to his side by an encircling arm and the breath was beaten from him as Lynch's impact sent them crashing into the wall. "You will, will you?" Benny snarled thickly. "Cheat an' steal an' ... lie." They strained so for a moment, faces close together, the eyes of the miner glittering hate, those of Lytton reflecting the mounting fear, that possessed him. "Who are you?" he screamed. "You ... you snake!" "I'm Lynch ... Lynch! Son of an old man you cheated an' killed!" Benny shouted. "I've waited for years for this.... 'T was Bayard, th' man you hunted, tied me up so I couldn't ... kill you. But you ... walked into your own trap...." "You sna--"