Mackenzie wrenched free from the great hand that closed about his throat, tearing the mighty arm away with the strength of both his own. A moment, and he was involved in the most desperate struggle that he had ever faced in his life. This interference gave Reid a new gulp of life. The three combatants were on their feet now, not a word spoken, not a sound but the dull impact of blows and the hard breathings of the two who fought this monster of the sheeplands for their lives. Swan Carlson, Mackenzie believed him to be, indulging his insane desire for strangling out the lives of men. He had approached so stealthily, with such wild cunning, that the dogs had given no alarm, and had taken the gun to insure against miscarriage or interruption in his horrible menu of death. A brief tangle of locked arms, swaying bodies, ribs all but crushed in the embrace of those bestial arms, and Mackenzie was conscious that he was fighting the battle alone. In the wild swirl of it he could not see whether Reid had fallen or torn free. A little while, now in the pressure of those hairy, bare arms, now free for one gasping breath, fighting as man never fought in the sheeplands before that hour, and Mackenzie felt himself snatched up bodily and thrown down from uplifted arms with a force that must have ended all for him then but for the interposition of a sage-clump that broke the fall. Instantly the silent monster was upon him. Mackenzie met him hand to hand, fighting the best fight that was in him, chilled with the belief that it was his last. But he could not come up from his knees, and in this position his assailant bent over him, one hand on his forehead, the other at the back of his neck, a knee against his breast. Mackenzie tore at the great, stiff arms with his last desperate might, perhaps staying a little the pressure that in a moment more must snap his spine. As the assassin tightened this terrible grip Mackenzie's face was lifted toward the sky. Overhead was the moon, clear-edged, bright, in the dusk of the immensities beyond; behind the monster, who paused that breath as in design to fill his victim's last moment with a hope that he soon would mock, Mackenzie saw young Reid. The youth was close upon the midnight strangler, stooping low. As the terrible pressure on forehead and neck cracked his spine like a breaking icicle, Mackenzie believed he shouted, putting into his voice all that he felt of desperate need of help. And he saw young Reid strike, and felt the breaking wrench of the cruel hands relax, and fell down upon the ground like a dead man and knew no more. Reid was there with the lantern, putting water on Mackenzie's head when he again broke through the mists and followed the thread of his soul back to his body. Reid was encouraging him to be steady, and to take it easy, assuring him that he never saw a man put up such a fight as the schoolmaster had all but lost.