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the blackness. He hushed and stood holding his breath, listening intently, but could hear nothing except the frantic mules and the drum-drum of the pulse in his ears.

Abner pushed forward in the undergrowth with every nerve stretched ready to lunge at the first moving thing, when he suddenly remembered Tim Fraley.

The duplicity of Fraley detaining him by the camp fire while an accomplice slipped into the stable and hamstrung his mules poured the last drop into Abner's vial of fury. He turned from his futile search in the bushes and crashed out of the growth, passed the stable, and saw the fire on the top of the levee. In its light Fraley still sat.

Abner went running up the slope with clenched fists. Fraley saw his threatening form, moved to get up crying, "What the hell!"

Abner rapped out the bitterest expletive of the hills, and lunged. Fraley had not time to get to his feet but kicked at Abner's flying form. The next moment the two men were grappling on the levee, rolling over and over, choking each other; pounding each other's faces; panting, sobbing, cursing. . . .

Blows on the head filled Abner's eyes with red flames of light. Abner beat Fraley's head and face with all his strength; even receiving the fellow's blows was a sort of satisfaction. Once in the rolling Abner struck at Fraley's head and hit a stone.

With his skinned hand he clutched at his enemy's face and succeeded in sticking his fingers in the striker's eye and mouth. He clamped down digging his fingernail in the tender eyeball. Fraley bit savagely on Abner's thumb.

The most excruciating pain of the fight filled Abner's thumb and flowed up his arm in a hot jet. The teamster beat the prostrate man's face with his left hand, but Fraley recognized his advantage and lay doggedly biting off the first joint of the thumb. Amid a lancinating agony, Abner gouged his middle finger deeper into Fraley's eye, and with his left hand seized and choked the striker's hairy throat.