n his black eyes. There was no
mistaking the look; Slim was violently, murderously insane!

"I'm goin' to get you!" His scream was like a woman's screech. "I've
meant to get you all along, and I'm goin' to do it now!"

"Drop it, Slim! Drop that ax!"

But Slim came on.

Instinctively Bruce reached for the heavy, old-fashioned revolver
hanging on its nail.

Slim half turned his body to get a longer, harder swing, aiming as
deliberately for Bruce's head as though he meant to split a stick of
wood.

Bruce saw one desperate chance and took it. He could not bring himself
to stop Slim with a gun. He flung it from him. Swift and sure he swooped
and caught Slim by the ankles in the instant that he paused. Exerting
his great strength, he hurled him over his shoulder, ax and all, where
he fell hard, in a heap, in the corner, between the bunk and wall. The
sharp blade of the ax cut the carotid artery.

Bruce turned to see a spurt of blood. Slim rolled over on his back, and
it gushed like a crimson fountain. Bruce knelt beside him, trying
frantically to bring together the severed ends, to stop somehow the
ghastly flow that was draining the madman's veins.

But he did not know how, his fingers were clumsy, and Slim would not lie
still. He threshed about like a dying animal, trying to rise and stagger
around the room. Finally his chest heaved, and his contracted leg
dropped with a thud. Bruce stared at the awful pallor of Slim's face,
then he got up and washed his hands.

He looked at the watch ticking steadily through it all; it was barely a
quarter to five. He spread his slicker on the bunk and laid Slim on it
and tried to wash the blood from the floor and the logs of the cabin
wall, but it left a stain. He changed his shirt--murderers always
changed their shirts and burned them.

Slim was dead; he wouldn't have to get supper for Slim--ever again. And
he had killed him! Mechanically he poked his finger into the dough. It
was rising. He could work it out pretty soon. Slim was dead; he need not
get supper for Slim; he kept looking at him to see if he had moved. How
sinister, how "onery" Slim looked even in death. He closed his mouth and
drew the corner of a blanket over the cruel, narrow face. How still it
seemed after the commotion and Slim's maniacal screams!

He had joined the army of men who have killed their partners. What
trifles bring on quarrels in the hills; what mountains molehills become
when men are alone in