limb in the horrible contortion of this
savage strife. Every muscle had been so wrenched, no pain or wound
reported itself fairly to the congested brain. I had nearly reached the
wall, and I was making a frantic effort to fling the Indian against it.
I had his shoulder almost upon the rocky side, and my grip was tight
about him, when he turned on me the same trick I had played in the early
part of this awful game. A sudden relaxation threw me off my guard. The
blood was streaming from a wound on my forehead, and I loosed my hold to
throw back my long hair from my face and wipe the trickling drops from
my eyes. In that fatal moment my mind went blank, whether from loss of
blood or a sudden blow from Jean, I do not know. When I did know myself,
I seemed to have fallen through leagues of space, to be falling still,
until a pain, so sharp that it was a blessing, brought me to my senses.
The light was very dim, but my right hand was free. I aimed one blow at
Jean's shoulder, and he fell by the cliff's edge, dragging me with him,
my weight on his body. His left hand hung over the cliff-side. I should
have finished with him then, but that the fallen hand, down in the black
shadows, had closed over a knife sticking in the crevice just below the
edge of the bluff--Jean Le Claire's knife, that had been flung from
O'mie's grip as he fell.

I caught its gleam as the half-breed flashed it upward in a swift stab
at my heart and my breath hung back. I leaped from him in time to save
my life, but not quickly enough to keep the villainous thing from
cutting a long jagged track across my thigh, from which spurted a
crimson flood. There could be only one thing evermore for us two. A
redoubled fury seized me, and then there swept up in me a power for
which I cannot account, unless it may be that the Angel of Life, who
guards all the passes of the valley of the shadow, sometimes turns back
the tide for us. A sudden calmness filled me, a cool courage contrasting
with Jean's frenzy, and I set my teeth together with the grip of a
bulldog. Jean had leaped to his feet as I sprang back from his
knife-thrust, and for the first time since the fight began we stood
apart for half a minute.

"I may die, but I'll never be cut to death. It must be an equal fight,
and when I go, Jean Pahusca, you are going with me. I'll have that knife
first and then I'll kill you with my own hands, if my breath goes out at
that same instant."

There must have been s