the scheme in my mind, my hand went instinctively to my belt
and grasped the tomahawk. I trembled with excitement, and as if to keep
pace with my thoughts, my steps quickened, and a few strides brought me
close upon my victim. My quick and labored breathing must have attracted
his attention, as, suddenly wheeling, he confronted me, and evidently
read the murderous intention in my eye, he sprang lightly to one side,
and unsheathing his knife, stood as if expecting an attack.
Simultaneously with this action, I drew my tomahawk and rushed upon him,
aiming a blow at his head. He adroitly parried it with his arm, but in
so doing received a severe wound in the shoulder. Darting at me, he
clutched my arm, and twining his limbs about my person, made a desperate
endeavor to bring me to the ground. The tomahawk was of no use now; I
allowed it to fall from my grasp, and with the disengaged hand clutched
my knife.

My antagonist's superior strength began to tell. I felt powerless, and
his eyes gleamed with fiendish triumph. He raised the shining blade
preparatory to sheathing it in my body, when I suddenly felt the ground
giving way beneath my feet, and in less time than it takes to relate it,
we were rolling over a precipice with a sheer fall of about ten feet.
The savage clung to me with a death-like grip, and encircling my neck
with his arm, grasped my throat _with his teeth_. Those were fearful
moments. I struggled to disengage my hand from his vice-like grip. The
blood gurgled from my mouth, my tongue protruded, and I was gasping for
breath in the last throes of strangulation, when we came to the ground
with a terrific shock.

The savage gave one yell that curdled my blood, and instantly relaxed
his hold, falling limp and lifeless by my side. I was not many minutes
in disengaging myself from my antagonist, and in doing so I was made
aware of the cause of the sudden turn of events that had saved me from a
horrible death. It would appear, that during the struggle and fall, the
hand that grasped my knife was encircled around the body of my foe, and
when we struck the ground, my body being uppermost, the knife had been
driven to the hilt into his back by the force of the concussion.

Everything now depended on the celerity of my movements. The remainder
of the party would no doubt wonder at our long absence, and despatch
runners to seek the missing "signal" makers. It would require but a
glance at the prostrate form of their co