e man's deliberate character flatly contradicted itself. There
was no pause for consideration, no thought for what was best to do. He
had heard that cry, and had recognized the voice. It was a cry that
summoned him, and wrung the depths of his heart. His breakfast was
pitched to the ground. And, as though fate had ordained it, he beheld
a heavy rawhide quirt lying on the ground where he had halted. He
grabbed the cruel weapon up, and set off at a run in the direction
whence the cry had come.

His feet were still encased in the soft moccasin slippers he usually
wore in exchange for his riding boots, and, as he ran, they gave out
no sound. It was a matter of fifty yards to the foreman's hut, and he
sprinted this in even time, keeping the building between himself and a
direct view of the barn, in the region of which lay his destination.
And as he ran the set expression of his face boded ill for some one.
Jaws and mouth were clenched to a fierce rigidity that said far more
than any words could have done.

He paused for one breathless instant at the hither side of the
foreman's hut. It was because he heard Jake's voice cursing on the
other side of it. Then he heard that which made his blood leap to his
brain. It was a stifled cry in Nelson's now almost unrecognizable
voice. And its piteous appeal aroused in him a blind fury.

He charged round the building in half a dozen strides. One glance at
the scene was sufficient. Poor old Joe Nelson was lying on the ground,
his arms thrown out to protect his head, while Jake, his face ablaze,
stood over him, kicking him with his cruel field boots, with a force
and brutishness that promised to break every bone in the old man's
body.

It all came to him in a flash.

Then he leapt with a rush at the author of the unnatural scene. The
butt of his quirt was uplifted. It swung above his head a full
half-circle, then it descended with that whistling split of the air
that told of the rage and force that impelled it. It took the giant
square across the face, laying the flesh open and sending the blood
spurting with its vicious impact. It sent him reeling backward with a
howl of pain, like a child at the slash of an admonishing cane. And
Jake's hands went up to his wounds at once; but, even so, his
movements were not swift enough to protect him from a second slash of
the vengeful thong. And Tresler's aim was so swift and sure that the
bully fell to the ground like a pole-axed steer.

And