bob-tailed flush of a bad man! You're only a
lake-mouthed, red-headed wart of a two-by-four puncher, that's what----"

Tex had been stunned by surprise at such an outburst from a man whom he
had always regarded as woefully lacking in courage. Then his face flamed
with an insane rage at the taunting insults hurled venomously at him and
he sprang to action as though he had been struck. It would have been bad
enough to hear such words from an equal, but from Bill!

"Yu cur!" he yelled as he leaped forward into the tearing sting of the
driver's whip, which had been hanging from the wrist.

"You're the fourth dog I cut to-day," Bill said, jerking it back for
another try.

Tex shivered with pain as the lash cut through his ear, as it would have
cut through paper, and screamed his words as he avoided the second blow.
"I'll show yu if I am man enough! I'll kill yu for that, d----n yu!"

As Tex threw his arms wide open to clinch, Bill leaped aside and drove
his heavy fist into the cowman's face as he passed, knocking him sidewise
against the wall of the defile; and then struggled like a madman in the
toils of two ropes. He was a Berserker now, a maniac without a hope
of life, and he screamed with rage as he tore frantically at the rough
hair ropes, wishing only to destroy, to kill with his bare hands. The blow
had not been well placed, being too high for the vital point, but it had
smashed the puncher's nose flat to his face and one eye was fast losing
its resemblance to the other. Tex staggered to his feet and returned
to the attack, striking savagely at the face of the bound man. Bill
avoided the blow by jerking his head aside and snarled like a beast
as he drove the heel of his heavy boot into his enemy's stomach. Then
everything grew black before his eyes and a roaring sound filled his
ears. The rope slackened and the men who had thrown him head-first on a
rock leaped from their horses and ran to him.

When his senses returned he found himself bound hand and foot and under a
spur of rock which projected from the bank of the cut. His face was cut
and bruised and his scalp laid open, but through the blood which dripped
from his eyebrows he vaguely saw Tex, bent double and rocking back and
forth on the ground, intoned moans coming from him with a sound like that
made by a rasp on the edge of a box.

As Bill's brain cleared he became conscious of excruciating pains in
his head, as if hammers were crashing against his skull