“God!” he muttered, for had the fist caught Hale's head it must, it seemed, have crushed it like an egg-shell. Hale coolly withdrew his head not more than an inch, it seemed to Budd's practised eye, and jabbed his right with a lightning uppercut into Dave's jaw, that made the mountaineer reel backward with a grunt of rage and pain, and when he followed it up with a swing of his left on Dave's right eye and another terrific jolt with his right on the left jaw, and Budd saw the crazy rage in the mountaineer's face, he felt easy. In that rage Dave forgot his science as the Hon. Sam expected, and with a bellow he started at Hale like a cave-dweller to bite, tear, and throttle, but the lithe figure before him swayed this way and that like a shadow, and with every side-step a fist crushed on the mountaineer's nose, chin or jaw, until, blinded with blood and fury, Dave staggered aside toward the sergeant with the cry of a madman: “Gimme my gun! I'll kill him! Gimme my gun!” And when the sergeant sprang forward and caught the mountaineer, he dropped weeping with rage and shame to the ground. “You two just go back to town,” said the sergeant. “I'll take keer of him. Quick!” and he shook his head as Hale advanced. “He ain't goin' to shake hands with you.” The two turned back across the bridge and Hale went on to Budd's office to do what he was setting out to do when young Dave came. There he had the lawyer make out a deed in which the cabin in Lonesome Cove and the acres about it were conveyed in fee simple to June--her heirs and assigns forever; but the girl must not know until, Hale said, “her father dies, or I die, or she marries.” When he came out the sergeant was passing the door. “Ain't no use fightin' with one o' them fellers thataway,” he said, shaking his head. “If he whoops you, he'll crow over you as long as he lives, and if you whoop him, he'll kill ye the fust chance he gets. You'll have to watch that feller as long as you live--'specially when he's drinking. He'll remember that lickin' and want revenge fer it till the grave. One of you has got to die some day--shore.” And the sergeant was right. Dave was going through the Gap at that moment, cursing, swaying like a drunken man, firing his pistol and shouting his revenge to the echoing gray walls that took up his cries and sent them shrieking on the wind up every dark ravine. All the way up the mountain he was cursing. Under the gentle voice of the big Pine he was cursing still, and when his lips stopped, his heart was beating curses as he dropped down the other side of the mountain.