down. Belllounds
raised up now and, looking backward, he deliberately and furiously
kicked Moore's bandaged foot; once, twice, again and again, until the
straining form under him grew limp. Columbine, slowly freezing with
horror, saw all this. She could not move. She could not scream. She
wanted to rush in and drag Jack off of Wilson, to hurt him, to kill him,
but her muscles were paralyzed. In her agony she could not even look
away. Belllounds got up astride his prostrate adversary and began to
beat him brutally, swinging heavy, sodden blows. His face then was
terrible to see. He meant murder.

Columbine heard approaching voices and the thumping of hasty feet. That
unclamped her cloven tongue. Wildly she screamed. Old Bill Belllounds
appeared, striding off the porch. And the hunter Wade came running
down the path.

"Dad! he's killing Wilson!" cried Columbine.

"Hyar, you devil!" roared the rancher.

Jack Belllounds got up. Panting, disheveled, with hair ruffled and face
distorted, he was not a pleasant sight for even the father. Moore lay
unconscious, with ghastly, bloody features, and his bandaged foot showed
great splotches of red.

"My Gawd, son!" gasped Old Bill. "You didn't pick on this hyar crippled
boy?"

The evidence was plain, in Moore's quiet, pathetic form, in the panting,
purple-faced son. Jack Belllounds did not answer. He was in the grip of
a passion that had at last been wholly unleashed and was still
unsatisfied. Yet a malignant and exultant gratification showed in
his face.

"That--evens us--up, Moore," he panted, and stalked away.

By this time Wade reached the cowboy and knelt beside him. Columbine
came running to fall on her knees. The old rancher seemed stricken.

"Oh--Oh! it was terrible--" cried Columbine. "Oh--he's so white--and the
blood--"

"Now, lass, that's no way for a woman," said Wade, and there was
something in his kind tone, in his look, in his presence, that calmed
Columbine. "I'll look after Moore. You go get some water an' a towel."

Columbine rose to totter into the house. She saw a red stain on the hand
she had laid upon the cowboy's face, and with a strange, hot, bursting
sensation, strong and thrilling, she put that red place to her lips.
Running out with the things required by Wade, she was in time to hear
the rancher say, "Looks hurt bad, to me."

"Yes, I reckon," replied Wade.

While Columbine held Moore's head upon her lap the hunter bathed the
bloody face.