"It's here." The man's right hand was fumbling in the side pocket of his overalls. "Broke or paralyzed or something! Oh! oh! Mister, you won the fight. Oh! Going to leave me here for the buzzards, I s'pose?" "What do you take me for?" Roger bent over his victim. "Turn over so I can see where your hand is." "Oh, oh! Straighten my leg out, for Gawd's sake." Roger bent to do so, his eyes for the moment leaving the other's face. "Easy; easy, now. There, you sucker; take that!" As one might leap back from a reptile's fangs, so Roger leaped at the burning sensation and the thud of a blow on his back. The cattleman, too, came to his feet with a spring that betrayed his shaming [Transcriber's note: shamming?]; and at sight of the glistening thing in the man's hand Roger understood. It was a long-bladed clasp knife with a button catch. While the man was groaning and pretending to feel for his broken bones he had opened the knife in his pocket; and when Roger had bent over the man had stabbed him in the back. The man was grinning in bestial fashion, his teeth bared, his eyes alight with devilish expectancy, waiting for his victim to fall. He was gloating; he feasted his eyes upon Roger's fresh young face, his bright eyes, and waited for the flesh to begin to fade and grow greenish white; for the eyes to fill with a slow astonishment and to grow dim as a light that is turned out, and for the great young body to come crashing stupidly to the ground. He made no move to strike again; he was too intensely interested in anticipation of the sight he thought to gloat over. The delectable spectacle did not seem to come. The victim's fresh color did not fade; his bright eyes did not grow dim. "Missed," said Roger quietly, withdrawing his wet hand from its exploration. "Hit a rib. Now, cur, do your damnedest!" He walked forward toward the outpointed knife, walked straight-limbed and head up, his shoulders squared, his jaw set in fashion that indicated how completely caution had been flung aside. But the man was watching the blue eyes and he was of the breed that cannot fight fair. He quailed before the Northern relentlessness, bred of kinship with the relentless Northern ice, that showed in those blue eyes. He could not fathom what was in the look that chilled him; his breed never could; but one thing he understood: He had met his master. He gave ground a foot, the knife still held out before him. He gave a yard. He wilted, became panic-stricken, turned and fled to his horse and galloped away. Well out of reach he turned and waved his blade in a dramatic threat. Then he disappeared behind an islet of palmetto scrub. XIX Payne stalked back to where Higgins and his negroes were slashing into the elderberry brush. "Call 'em off," he said abruptly. "We're going to build a fence. They've served their first notice; I'm going to shoot one back at them."