d not grasp the full
reality--that the play was now only a vehicle for a personal issue of a
desperate character. No one had ever seen O'Ryan angry; and now that the
demon of rage was on him, directed by a will suddenly grown to its full
height, they saw not only a powerful character in a powerful melodrama,
but a man of wild force. When the three desperadoes closed in on O'Ryan,
and, with a blow from the shoulder which was not a pretence, he sent
Holden into a far corner gasping for breath and moaning with pain, the
audience broke out into wild cheering. It was superb acting, they thought.
As most of them had never seen the play, they were not surprised when
Holden did not again join the attack on the deputy-sheriff. Those who did
know the drama--among them Molly Mackinder--became dismayed, then
anxious.

Fergus and Jopp knew well from the blow O'Ryan had given that, unless they
could drag him down, the end must be disaster to some one. They were
struggling with him for personal safety now. The play was forgotten,
though mechanically O'Ryan and Fergus repeated the exclamations and the
few phrases belonging to the part. Jopp was silent, fighting with a malice
which belongs to only half-breed, or half-bred, natures; and from far back
in his own nature the distant Indian strain in him was working in savage
hatred. The two were desperately hanging onto O'Ryan like pumas on a
grizzly, when suddenly, with a twist he had learned from Ogami the Jap on
the Smoky River, the slim Fergus was slung backward to the ground with the
tendons of his arm strained and the arm itself useless for further work.
There remained now Constantine Jopp, heavier and more powerful than
O'Ryan.

For O'Ryan the theatre, the people, disappeared. He was a boy again on the
village-green, with the bully before him who had tortured his young days.
He forgot the old debt to the foe who saved his life; he forgot everything
except that once again, as of old, Constantine Jopp was fighting him, with
long, strong arms trying to bring him to the ground. Jopp's superior
height gave him an advantage in a close grip; the strength of his
gorilla-like arms was difficult to withstand. Both were forgetful of the
world, and the two other injured men, silent and awed, were watching the
fight, in which one of them, at least, was powerless to take part.

The audience was breathless. Most now saw the grim reality of the scene
before them; and when at last O'Ryan's powerful