ched out my clenched hands to him. Then he struck me again, a
bitter, felling blow.

I was completely at his mercy now and he showed me none. He was like a
fiend. Rage seemed to rend him. Time and again he kicked me, brutally,
relentlessly, on the ribs, on the chest, on the head. Was the man going
to do me to death? I shielded my head. I moaned in agony. Would he never
stop? Then I became unconscious, knowing that he was still kicking me,
and wondering if I would ever open my eyes again.

CHAPTER IV

"Long live the cold-feet tribe! Long live the soreheads!"

It was the Prodigal who spoke. "This outfit buying's got gold-mining
beaten to a standstill. Here I've been three weeks in the burg and got
over ten thousand dollars' worth of grub cached away. Every pound of it
will net me a hundred per cent. profit. I'm beginning to look on myself
as a second John D. Rockefeller."

"You're a confounded robber," I said. "You're working a cinch-game.
What's your first name? Isaac?"

He turned the bacon he was frying and smiled gayly.

"Snort away all you like, old sport. So long as I get the mon you can
call me any old name you please."

He was very sprightly and elate, but I was in no sort of mood to share
in his buoyancy. Physically I had fully recovered from my terrible
manhandling, but in spirit I still writhed at the outrage of it. And the
worst was I could do nothing. The law could not help me, for there were
no witnesses to the assault. I could never cope with this man in bodily
strength. Why was I not a stalwart? If I had been as tall and strong as
Garry, for instance. True, I might shoot; but there the Police would
take a hand in the game, and I would lose out badly. There seemed to be
nothing for it but to wait and pray for some means of retaliation.

Yet how bitterly I brooded over the business. At times there was even
black murder in my heart. I planned schemes of revenge, grinding my
teeth in impotent rage the while; and my feelings were complicated by
that awful gnawing hunger for Berna that never left me. It was a perfect
agony of heart, a panic-fear, a craving so intense that at times I felt
I would go distracted with the pain of it.

Perhaps I am a poor sort of being. I have often wondered. I either feel
intensely, or I am quite indifferent. I am a prey to my emotions, a
martyr to my moods. Apart from my great love for Berna it seemed to me
as if nothing mattered. All through these stormy years it