“Wow!” breathed the excited Gamecock, an eye at the aperture taking everything in. “Wish’t Brother Bill was hyer ter see this right now. But I’m afeard that this trouble is goin’ to make it mighty hard fer me and Bill to collect that reward fer Gorilla Jake; it begins to look as if he is goin’ to git all that’s comin’ to him. Yet that reward offer said ‘alive or dead.’ If he was scalped, I don’t reckon that would make any difference. Only--I hope they won’t burn him; ’twould be purty hard ter produce the body, in that case.” The Gamecock was trembling with excitement and apprehension. He wanted to hurl himself in there and take the part of the threatened man, then lead him off to the Blossom Range jail. But, plainly, that would not do. Even Jim Betts was not reckless enough to try that. “Benson’s a coward, er he’d git right up and into that game,” he breathed. “Gorilla Jake is his friend, ain’t he? Well, why don’t he stand by his friend?” The Indians were crowding before Gorilla Jake, who was shouting wildly at them. The one he had knocked down was on his feet again, this time with a hatchet in his hand. “Stand back!” the apelike man howled at them. His knife had come out. “Stand back, all o’ ye, er take the consequences. Y’ ain’t goin’ to pull me to pieces, and not git my knife, I tell ye. Thar on the floor is the man you want--not me; _he’s_ the man that started this thing, by s’jestin’ it. He’s the man that was to furnish the whisky--the coward; and now he sets thar, an’ let’s me do the fightin’. Stand back!” Few if any of them understood his English, but they understood the significance of the sweep of his long arm as it whirled the knife. The watching Gamecock did not know what they were yelling, but he judged that they were accusing him of treachery or deceit, or were demanding more whisky, which it was clear he could not furnish. It was plain, too, that they were temporarily crazy. That was the only explanation; and Benson and Gorilla Jake had made them so. No band of maniacs in any lunatic asylum ever looked more terrifying or more desperate. One of them sprang straight at the throat of Gorilla Jake like a dog flinging at an enemy. But he never reached the panting man. Gorilla Jake’s long arm swept out, struck him in mid-air with a thump, and the Ute dropped at the feet of the apelike man, his chest torn open by the knife. “Stand back!” the desperate man yelled, swinging the bloody knife. He looked insane, too, now; his lips frothing, his great shoulders and muscular arms working, his hairy, painted face twisted in rage, and his gray eyes glittering like an angry animal’s. The fall of the Ute stayed the braves before him, it had come so suddenly, but only for a moment; then another leaped at him, with still others rushing in right behind. Thump! Thump!