ot otherwise."

Buck hesitated, his eyes flashing from the weapon he whirled so carelessly
between his fingers to Lynch, whose eyes regarded him intently over the
girl's shoulder.

"That would be putting an awful lot of trust in you," he commented. "Once
you had the gun, what's to prevent you from drilling me--Oh, damn!"

He made a sudden, ineffectual grab at the gun, which had slipped from his
fingers, and missed. As the weapon clattered against the rocks, Lynch's
covetous glance followed it involuntarily. What happened next was a
bewildering whirl of violent, unexpected action.

To Mary it seemed as if Buck cleared the space between them in a single
amazing leap. He landed with one foot slipping on the ragged edge of the
precipice, and apparently threw his whole weight sidewise against Lynch
and the girl he held. Just how it happened she did not know, but in
another moment Mary found herself freed from those hateful, gripping hands
and flung back against her horse, while at her feet the two men grappled
savagely.

Over and over on the narrow confines of the sloping ledge they struggled
fiercely, heaving, panting, with muscles cracking, each seemingly
possessed with a grim determination to thrust the other into the abyss.
Now Buck was uppermost; again Lynch, by some clever trick, tore himself
from Stratton's hold to gain a momentary advantage.

Like one meshed in the thralls of some hateful nightmare, the girl
crouched against her horse, her face so still and white and ghastly that
it might well have been some clever sculptor's bizarre conception of
"Horror" done in marble. Only her eyes seemed to live. Wide, dilated,
glittering with an unnatural light, they shifted constantly, following the
progress of those two writhing bodies.

Once, when Lynch's horse snorted and moved uneasily, she caught his bridle
and quieted him with a soothing word, her voice so choked and hoarse that
she scarcely knew it. Again, as the men rolled toward the outer side of
the ledge and seemed for a moment almost to overhang the precipice, she
gave a smothered cry and darted forward, moved by some wild impulse to
fling her puny strength into the scale against the outlaw.

But with a heave of his big body, Buck saved himself as he had done more
than once before, and the struggle was resumed. Back and forth they
fought, over and over around that narrow space, until Mary was filled with
the dazed feeling that it had been going on for ever,