assed on velvet feet, and still she lingered, reluctant to break
the spell.

Suddenly, into their idyllic drowse of content, so sweet, so youthful,
and so pure of heart, broke the sound of a horse's hurrying, clashing,
steel-shod feet, and looking up Berrie saw a mounted man coming down the
mountainside with furious, reckless haste.

"It is Cliff!" she cried out. "He's on our trail!" And into her face came
a look of alarm. Her lips paled, her eyes widened. "He's mad--he's
dangerous! Leave him to me," she added, in a low, tense voice.

XI

THE DEATH-GRAPPLE

There was something so sinister in the rider's disregard of stone and
tree and pace, something so menacing in the forward thrust of his body,
that Berrie was able to divine his wrath, and was smitten into
irresolution--all her hardy, boyish self-reliance swallowed up in the
weakness of the woman. She forgot the pistol at her belt, and awaited the
assault with rigid pose.

As Belden neared them Norcross also perceived that the rider's face was
distorted with passion, and that his glance was not directed upon Berrie,
but upon himself, and he braced himself for the attack.

Leaving his saddle with one flying leap, which the cowboy practises at
play, Belden hurled himself upon his rival with the fury of a panther.

The slender youth went down before the big rancher as though struck by a
catapult; and the force of his fall against the stony earth stunned him
so that he lay beneath his enemy as helpless as a child.

[Illustration: THE SLENDER YOUTH WENT DOWN BEFORE THE BIG RANCHER
AS THOUGH STRUCK BY A CATAPULT]

Belden snarled between his teeth: "I told you I'd kill you, and I will."

But this was not to be. Berea suddenly recovered her native force. With a
cry of pain, of anger, she flung herself on the maddened man's back. Her
hands encircled his neck like a collar of bronze. Hardened by incessant
use of the cinch and the rope, her fingers sank into the sinews of his
great throat, shutting off both blood and breath.

"Let go!" she commanded, with deadly intensity. "Let go, or I'll choke
the life out of you! Let go, I say!"

He raised a hand to beat her off, but she was too strong, too desperate
to be driven away. She was as blind to pain as a mother eagle, and bent
above him so closely that he could not bring the full weight of his fist
to bear. With one determined hand still clutching his throat, she ran the
fingers of her other hand into his hai