he drew great breaths of air into his lungs. Then he felt for his
pistol. The holster was empty.

He could hear the panting of the girl, her sobbing breath very near him,
and life and strength leaped back into his body. The man who had choked
him was advancing again, on hands and knees. In a flash Alan was up and
on him like a lithe cat. His fist beat into a bearded face; he called
out to Mary as he struck, and through his blows saw her where she had
fallen to her knees, with a second hulk bending over her, almost in the
water of the little spring from which she had been drinking. A mad curse
leaped from his lips. He was ready to kill now; he wanted to kill--to
destroy what was already under his hands that he might leap upon this
other beast, who stood over Mary Standish, his hands twisted in her long
hair. Dazed by blows that fell with the force of a club the bearded
man's head sagged backward, and Alan's fingers dug into his throat. It
was a bull's neck. He tried to break it. Ten seconds--twenty--half a
minute at the most--and flesh and bone would have given way--but before
the bearded man's gasping cry was gone from his lips the second figure
leaped upon Alan.

He had no time to defend himself from this new attack. His strength was
half gone, and a terrific blow sent him reeling. Blindly he reached out
and grappled. Not until his arms met those of his fresh assailant did he
realize how much of himself he had expended upon the other. A sickening
horror filled his soul as he felt his weakness, and an involuntary moan
broke from his lips. Even then he would have cut out his tongue to have
silenced that sound, to have kept it from the girl. She was creeping on
her hands and knees, but he could not see. Her long hair trailed in the
trampled earth, and in the muddied water of the spring, and her hands
were groping--groping--until they found what they were seeking.

Then she rose to her feet, carrying the rock on which one of her hands
had rested when she knelt to drink. The bearded man, bringing himself to
his knees, reached out drunkenly, but she avoided him and poised herself
over Alan and his assailant. The rock descended. Alan saw her then; he
heard the one swift, terrible blow, and his enemy rolled away from him,
limply and without sound. He staggered to his feet and for a moment
caught the swaying girl in his arms.

The bearded man was rising. He was half on his feet when Alan was at his
throat again, and they wen