It was a suddenness which even with suddenness expected came bolt-like, and Thornton, leaping sidewise, caught its passing force and stumbled, but grappled and carried his adversary down with him. The two rolled in an embrace that strained ribs inward on panting lungs, leg locking leg, and fingers clutching for a vulnerable hold. But Thornton slipped eel-like out of the chancery that would have crushed him into helplessness and sprang to his feet, and if Rowlett was slower, it was by only a shade of difference. They stood, with sweat already flowing in tiny freshets out of their pores and eyes blazing with murderous fire. They crouched and circled, advancing step by step, each warily sparring for an advantage and ready to plunge in or leap sidewise. Then came the impact of bone and flesh once more, and both went down, Thornton's face pressed against that of his enemy as they fell, and Rowlett opened and clamped his jaws as does a bull-dog trying for a grip upon the jugular. That battle was homerically barbaric and starkly savage. It was fought between two wild creatures who had shed their humanity: one the stronger and more massive of brawn; the other more adroit and resourceful. But the teeth of the conspirator closed on the angle of the jawbone instead of the neck--and found no fleshy hold, and while they twisted and writhed with weird incoherencies of sound going up in the smother of dust, Bas Rowlett felt the closing of iron fingers on his throat. While he clawed and gripped and kicked to break the strangle, his eyes seemed to swell and burn and start from their sockets, and the patch of darkening sky went black. It was only the collapse of the human mass in his arms into dead weight that brought Parish Thornton again out of his mania and back to consciousness. The battle was over, and as he drew his arms away his enemy sank shapeless and limp at his feet. For a few seconds more Thornton stood rocking on unsteady legs, then, with a final and supreme effort, he stooped and lifted the heavy weight that hung sagging like one newly dead and not yet rigid. With his burden Parish staggered to the cliff's edge and swung his man from side to side, gaining momentum. Then suddenly he stopped and stood silhouetted there, sweat-shiny and tattered, blood-stained and panting, and instead of pitching Bas Rowlett outward he laid him down again on the shelf of rock. How much later he did not know, though he knew that it was twilight now, Bas Rowlett seemed to come out of a heavy and disturbed sleep in which there had been no rest, and he found himself lying with his feet hanging over the precipice edge, and with Thornton looking intently down upon him. In Thornton's hand was the recovered pistol--so there must have been time enough for that.