od many a night with rifle
in hand filling the place of lookout for an outlaw father who trafficked
in moonshine whisky, had taught her to be careless of physical dangers.
The terrors of a different sort of passion she had never known; but now,
with this averted, her nature leapt beyond the past eight years of
training--eight years spent in fitting herself as teacher for this
school--and transported her to those early days of partial savagery.
Again she was the little mountain outlaw, and the feeling was good, and
her heart bounded with a primeval pleasure of this excitement which was
routing every previous qualm of fright. Bent breathlessly forward, her
hands clenched into revengeful little fists, her cheeks and eyes aflame
and eager, her lips apart, and her nostrils dilated as though in very
truth they sought the smell of battle, she was not a picture of one who
would mount a horse and fly.

At the first rush Tusk's knife had fallen from his hand and now lay
almost at her feet. Stooping impulsively, she seized it, while at the
same moment he uttered a low chuckle of satisfaction and started to
arise. He did not move as one entirely free, but clinging to a burden,
and when his shoulders slowly appeared she saw that he was lifting the
other man, who still struck ineffectually at his face. Handling him
with no great exertion, he backed against a desk and forced the body
between his knees; then placing one huge, hairy hand behind his victim's
ear, and the other beneath his chin, he began calmly to twist.

Jane realized the hellishness of this move which with cruel certainty
would break the yielding neck. The mountaineer also knew, and put his
remaining strength into the struggle, yet only for a moment did it seem
to divert Tusk's purpose.

If the girl had previously looked the beautiful savage, she now became
its incarnation. With an agonized cry she screamed at him to stop, but
his answer was to pin the man more firmly and recommence the murderous
twisting.

It was a matter of seconds now. Any instant she might hear the snap, and
see the one who was giving his life for her quiver and become still. No
longer hesitating, she flew at them with the blade raised high and
poised herself for the stroke. Yet she could not send it. Again she
tried, and a sob of rage burst from her throat as the hand refused to
obey. Had the creature turned, it might have been less difficult; but
the utter revulsion of driving steel into unsus