f pacifist and rescuer.

As Bear Cat had gone stumbling out, bearing his burden of wounded and
misused humanity, two men started forward keyed for pursuit.

"We kin still git 'em from ther brush," hazarded one, but with a biting
sarcasm the chieftain wheeled on the volunteer.

"Stand where ye're at, ye fool! Ye've done flung away ther chanst--an'
plunged us all inter tribulation! Hain't I got no men thet hain't
damned bunglers?"

He stood panting in a rage like hydrophobia.

"Thet Bear Cat, he hain't mortal noways!" whined a disheveled youth who
nursed a limp arm. "I seed his chest square on my pistol sights, not
two yards' distant, an' I shot two shoots thet hed a right ter be
deadeners--but ther bullets jest bounced offen him. Ye kin bleed him a
leetle, but ye kain't in no fashion _kill_ him."

Kinnard Towers stood looking about the debris of the place where
shattered bottles on the shelves and grotesque figures cluttering the
floor bore testimony to the hurricane that had swept and wrecked it.

"Them fools war mortal enough," he disdainfully commented. "I reckon
ye'd better take a tally an' see what kin be done fer 'em."

* * * * *

Under stars that were frostily clear, Bear Cat Stacy rode doggedly on,
gripping in his arms the limp and helpless figure of Jerry Henderson.
Beneath his shirt he was conscious of a lukewarm seeping of moisture as
if a bottle had broken in an inner pocket and he recognized the leakage
as waste from his own arteries.

Within his skull persisted a throbbing torture, so that from time to
time he closed his eyes in futile effort to ease the blinding and
confusing pain. With both arms wrapped about the insensible figure
before him, and one hand clutching his pistol, rather from instinct
than usefulness, he went with hanging reins. A trickle of blood filled
his eyes and, having no free hand, he bent and dabbed his face against
the shoulder of his human burden. Through all his joints and veins he
could feel the scalding rise of a fever wave like a swelling tide. To
his imagination this half-delirious recognition of sanity-consuming
heat became an external thing which he must combat with will-power. So
long as he could fight it down from engulfing and quenching his brain,
he told himself, he could go on. Failing in that, he would be drowned
in a steaming whirlpool of madness.

The stark and shapeless ramparts of the hills became to his disordere