n form to receive the charge of
his assailant.

"Ned, my boy," said the latter, without looking at him, "get back.
There's no telling what may happen."

This was no more than a prudent caution. The fight was over the boy, and
if Lone Wolf should find the battle going against him, he would resort
to any treacherous trick by which to destroy the prize,--such, for
instance, as a sudden dart upon the unsuspecting spectator and the
plunging of his knife to his heart before the active hunter could thwart
him. Ned obeyed his rescuer, whom he had never seen before, and stepped
back full a dozen yards from the combatants, but with his eyes intently
fixed upon them.

Tom was not the man to advance blindly to the assault, for none knew
better than he did the character of the foe he was about to assail.
When, therefore, he was just within striking distance, he paused, and,
with his grey eyes centered upon the black, snake-like orbs of the
chief, began circling around him in a stealthy cat-like movement, on the
lookout for some opening of which he might take advantage.

"Lone Wolf is a coward and a dog," he growled between his set teeth. "He
fights with pappooses, but he is afraid of men."

This was said with the sole purpose of exasperating the warrior, who
would thus have been placed at a slight disadvantage; but he was already
like a concentrated volcano--calm outwardly, but surcharged with fire
and death within. The taunt did not move his nerves an iota, and he
replied in words which were scarcely less irritating.

"It is the boasting dog which never hurts. If Lone Wolf is a dog, why
are you so afraid to come within his reach?"

The words were yet in his mouth when the scout dashed forward like a
catapult and struck a tremendous blow, driven with such directness and
swiftness that it could not have been parried. At the very instant
Hardynge made the charge, Lone Wolf did the same, and the two similar
blows, aimed at the same moment, encountered half way with such terrible
violence that both knives were hurled twenty feet beyond over the cliff
at their side, and irrevocably beyond their reach. This left them with
no weapons except such as nature had provided them with, and, now that
their blood was up and each was smarting under the pain of the first
collision, they immediately closed in and grappled each other like a
couple of infuriated gladiators.

Hardynge was a marvel of strength and activity, and so was the Apache.