ty of
tipsiness. His eyes were no longer obfuscated and muddled with whiskey
fumes. He had reverted to the feral instincts of desperation--and was
suddenly sobered.

He gripped his out-thrust pistol in both hands for greater surety and
half-crouched with knees bent under him, ready either to spring or
brace himself against attack. His eyes, gleaming with blood-passion,
traveled shiftily so that he could keep watch on both his possible
adversaries.

The other and younger man stood upright, but his muscles, too, were
poised and balanced with all nicety of readiness and his eyes were
measuring the distance between: gauging sundry odds of life and death.

For a moment more the tableau held in silence. Both the miller and the
boy could hear the labored, almost gasping breath of the man with the
pistol and both knew that the mean temper of his heart's metal was
weakening.

Then when a squirrel barked from the timber, Ratler Webb started
violently and above the stubble of dirty beard, sweat drops began to
ooze on his face.

Why didn't Bear Cat Stacy say something? Why didn't somebody move? If
he fired now he must kill both men or leave a witness to blab deadly
information close on the heels of his flight! In his heart welled a
rising tide of panic.

Turner knew by instinct that every moment he could hold Ratler there
with his pistol leveled, was for the desperado, a moment of weakening
resolve and nerve-breaking suspense. But he also knew another thing.
When the strain of that waiting snapped Ratler would either run or
shoot. Mountain annals hold more instances of the latter decision that
the former, but that was the chance to be taken.

Webb carried a notched gun. He had forced many fights in his day, but
in all of them there had been the swift tonic of action and little time
to think. Now he dared not lower his weapon in surrender--and he was
afraid to fire. He felt that his lips were growing dry and thickening.
He thrust out his tongue to lick them, and its red tip gave, to his
ugly features, a strange grotesqueness.

Under the brown of wind and sun and the red of liquor-flush his face
paled perceptibly. Then it grew greenish yellow with a sick clamminess
of dread.

At last with a discernible quaver in his voice he broke the unendurable
silence, and his words came brokenly and disjointed:

"I didn't aim ter force no quarrel on ye, Bear Cat.... Ef ye plumb
compels me ter do hit, I've got ter kill ye, but I hain