ie's quick blows seemed to fall impotently on the body of the
man who now grappled with him, face to face, Hector Hall throwing
himself into the tangle from the rear. Mackenzie, seeing his assault
shaping for a speedy end in his own defeat, now attempted to break
away and seek shelter in the dark among the bushes. He wrenched free
for a moment, ducked, ran, only to come down in a few yards with
Hector Hall on his back like a catamount.

Fighting every inch of the way, Mackenzie was dragged back to the
wagon, where his captors backed him against one of the hind wheels and
bound him, his arms outstretched across the spokes in the manner of a
man crucified.

They had used Mackenzie illy in that fight to get him back to the
wagon; his face was bleeding, a blow in the mouth had puffed his lips.
His hat was gone, his shirt torn open on his bosom, but a wild rage
throbbed in him which lifted him above the thought of consequences as
he strained at the ropes which held his arms.

They left his feet free, as if to mock him with half liberty in the
ordeal they had set for him to face. One mounted the front wagon wheel
near Mackenzie, and the light of slow-coming dawn on the sky beyond
him showed his hand uplifted as if he sprinkled something over the
wagon sheet. The smell of kerosene spread through the still air; a
match crackled on the wagon tire. A flash, a sudden springing of
flame, a roar, and the canvas was enveloped in fire.

Mackenzie leaned against his bonds, straining away from the sudden
heat, the fast-running fire eating the canvas from the bows, the bunk
within, and all the furnishings and supplies, on fire. There seemed to
be no wind, a merciful circumstance, for a whip of the high-striving
flames would have wrapped him, stifling out his life in a moment.

Hall and the other man, who had striven with Mackenzie in such
powerful silence, had drawn away from the fire beyond his sight to
enjoy the thing they had done. Mackenzie, turning his fearful gaze
over his shoulder, calculated his life in seconds. The fire was at his
back, his hair was crinkling in the heat of it, a little moving breath
of wind to fill the sudden vacuum drew a tongue of blaze with sharp
threat against his cheek.

In a moment the oil-drenched canvas would be gone, the flaming
contents of the wagon, the woodwork of box and running gears left to
burn more slowly, and his flesh and bones must mingle ashes with the
ashes, to be blown on the wind,