eagle, in morning flight, soared majestically out from a
jutting crag and circled again and again in front of El Capitan, while
the air sang with the whining dice that two gamblers against death
threw across the gulf between them. Nan, half hidden in her trough of
rock, watched the great bird poise and wheel above the deadly firing,
and tried to close her eyes to the figure of de Spain above her,
fighting for her life and his own.

She had never before seen a man shooting to kill another. The very
horror of watching de Spain, at bay among the rocks, fascinated her.
Since the first day they had met she had hardly seen a rifle in his
hands.

Realizing how slightly she had given thought to him or to his skill at
that time, she saw now, spellbound, how a challenge to death,
benumbing her with fear, had transformed him into a silent, pitiless
foeman, fighting with a lightning-like decision that charged every
motion with a fatality for his treacherous enemy. Her rifle, at his
shoulder, no longer a mere mechanism, seemed in his hands something
weightless, sensible, alive, a deadly part of his arm and eye and
brain. There was no question, no thought of adjusting or handling or
haste in his fire, but only an incredible swiftness and sureness that
sent across the thin-aired chasm a stream of deadly messengers to seek
a human life. She could only hope and pray, without even forming the
words, that none of her blood were behind the other rifle, for she
felt that, whoever was, could never escape.

She tried not to look. The butt of the heating rifle lay close against
the red-marked cheek she knew so well, and to the tips of the fingers
every particle of the man's being was alive with strength and
resource. Some strange fascination drew her senses out toward him as
he knelt and threw shot after shot at the distant figure hidden on the
ridge. She wanted to climb closer, to throw herself between him and
the bullets meant for him. She held out her arms and clasped her hands
toward him in an act of devotion. Then while she looked, breathlessly,
he took his eyes an instant from the sights. "He's running!" exclaimed
de Spain as the rifle butt went instantly back to his cheek. "Whoever
he is, God help him now!"

The words were more fearful to Nan than an imprecation. He had driven
his enemy from the scant cover of a rut in the trail, and the man was
fleeing for new cover and for life. The speck of black in the field of
intense vision