the blood in a pink meringue that dripped in fluffy chunks upon his
shirt front. The uninjured eye was a narrow gleam of venom, and the
breath swished through the man's nostrils as from the strain of great
physical labor.

"Oh, for my gun!" thought the girl. "I'd--I'd _kill_ him!" With a wild
scramble her horse went down. "Vil! Vil!" she shrieked, in a frenzy of
despair, and freeing herself from the floundering animal, she
struggled to her feet and faced her pursuer with a sharp rock fragment
upraised in her two hands.

Monk Bethune laughed--as the fiends must laugh in hell. A laugh that
struck a chill to the very heart of the girl. Her muscles went limp at
the sound of it and she felt the strength ebbing from her body like
sand from an upturned glass. The rock fragment became an insupportable
weight. It crashed to the ground, and rolled clattering to Bethune's
feet. He, too, had dismounted, and stood beside his horse, his fists
slowly clenching and unclenching in gloating anticipation. Patty
turned to run, but her limbs felt numb and heavy, and she pitched
forward upon her knees. With a slow movement of his hand, Bethune
wiped the pink foam from his chin, examined it, snapped it from his
fingers, cleansed them upon the sleeve of his shirt--and again,
deliberately, he laughed, and started to climb slowly forward.

A rock slipped close beside the girl, and the next instant a voice
sounded in her ear: "I don't reckon he's 'round yere, Miss. I hain't
saw Vil this mo'nin'." Rifle in hand, Watts stepped from behind a
scrub pine, and as his eyes fell upon Bethune, he stood fumbling his
beard with uncertain fingers.

"He--he'll kill me!" gasped the girl.

"Sho', now, Miss--he won't hurt yo' none, will yo', Mr. Bethune?
Gineral Jackson! Mr. Bethune, look at yo' face! Yo' must of rode
again' a limb!"

"Shut up, and get out of here!" screamed the quarter-breed. "And, if
you know what's good for you, you'll forget that you've seen anyone
this morning."

"B'en layin' up yere in the gap fer to git me a deer. I heerd yo'-all
comin', like, so's I waited."

"Get out, I tell you, before I kill you!" cried Bethune, beside
himself with rage. "Go!" The man's hand plunged beneath his shirt and
came out with a glitter of steel.

The mountaineer eyed the blade indifferently, and turned to the girl.
"Ef yo' goin' my ways, ma'am, jest yo' lead yo' hoss on ahaid. They's
a game trail runs slaunchways up th'ough the gap yender. I'll ki