Before Carrington could regain his balance Taylor had entered the room. He closed the door behind him, placed his back against it, locked it, and grinned felinely at the big man. “Your men are coming, Carrington,” he said—“hear them?” In the silence that followed his words both stood, listening to the beat of hoofs near the house. “They’ll be trying to get in here in a minute,” went on Taylor. “But before they get in I’m going to knock your head off!” And without further warning he was upon Carrington, striking bitterly. It seemed to Carrington that the man was endowed with a savage strength entirely out of proportion to his stature, and that he was able to start terrific, deadening blows from any angle. For though Carrington was a strong man and had had some fighting experience, he could neither evade Taylor’s blows nor stand against the impact of them. He went reeling around the room under the impetus of Taylor’s terrible rushes, struggling to defend himself, to dodge, to clinch, to evade somehow the fists that were flying at him from all directions. He could not get an instant’s respite in which to set himself. Three times in succession he was knocked down so heavily that the house shook with the crash of his body striking the floor, and each time when he got to his feet he tried to fight Taylor off in an endeavor to set himself for a blow. But he could not. He was knocked against the walls of the room, and hammered away from them with stiff, jolty, venomous blows that jarred him from head to heels. He tried vainly to cover up—with his arms locked about his head he crouched and tried to rush Taylor off his feet, knowing he was stronger than the other, and that his only hope was in clinching. But Taylor held him off with savage uppercuts and terrific short-arm swings that smashed his lips. He began to mutter in a whining, vicious monotone; twice he kicked at Taylor, and twice he was knocked down as a punishment for his foul methods. Finding his methods ineffectual, and discovering that covering his face with his arms did not materially lessen the punishment he was receiving, he began to stand up straight, taking blows in an effort to land one. But Taylor eluded him; Carrington’s blows did not land. Raging and muttering, roaring with impotent passion, he whipped the air with his arms, almost jerking them out of their sockets. Stiff and taut, his muscles accommodating themselves to every demand he made on them, and in perfect coordination with his brain—and the purpose of his brain to inflict upon Carrington the maximum of punishment for his dastardly attack on Marion Harlan—Taylor worked fast and furiously. For he heard Carrington’s three men in the next room; he heard them try the door; heard them call to Carrington.