houlders.

As if maddened by her struggles he crushed her to him and pinioning her
wrists in one powerful hand, he embedded the other in her loose hair
and brutally drew her head back until her face was upturned to his. A
moment he bent above her, crouching, feral, then he thrust his dark
bearded face against hers and shut off her screams.

At the first intimation of the man's violence Jean had rushed to her
sister's aid and was beating him with wildly impotent hands, calling
despairingly to Lollie, to Swimming Wolf, even to Gregg. Then like a
young tigress she sprang at him from behind trying to get a hold on his
neck so that she might drag him from Ellen.

But the man was impervious to everything outside the circle of his arms.

"Oh, Swimming Wolf! Oh, help! Help us!" Jean's desperate screams
rang out again as she heard the sound of hasty footsteps on the porch
outside.

She leaped for the door, but before her hand touched the latch it was
flung open and against the blinding sunshine loomed the tall figure of
Shane Boreland.

With one bound he crossed the living-room. There came the sound of a
blow, . . . struggling, . . . a sudden choked cry, and Shane's gasping
words:

"God . . . you cur . . . come . . . in the open . . . I'll kill you!"

Two writhing, panting figures reeled about the living-room. . . . They
broke. . . . Shane, livid with rage, side-stepped, and with the
agility of a wild-cat leaped again at his adversary. His arm encircled
and tightened about the trader's neck. Kilbuck turned in the grip and
chest to chest they swayed, strained, their tentative blows rendered
impotent by their very nearness to each other. With twistings of legs
and sudden saggings of bodies they sought to get each other prostrate.
The hot breath whistling from their gaping mouths made the only human
sounds. Wheeling, lurching they fought swiftly about the room,
knocking over chairs, . . . the table . . . sweeping the stove from its
foundation. Then Shane's ankle turned as his foot encountered the
fallen revolver, and he lost his balance.

In that instant the trader had him down--was upon him, slugging
viciously with both fists. From the first there was no science in the
fight. Both men inflamed--one with a long-denied passion for revenge,
the other with hatred for one he had wronged, had reverted to the
primitive lust to gouge, to claw, to kill with bare hands. They rolled
about the floor, first one on to