y and thrown down from
uplifted arms with a force that must have ended all for him then but
for the interposition of a sage-clump that broke the fall.

Instantly the silent monster was upon him. Mackenzie met him hand to
hand, fighting the best fight that was in him, chilled with the belief
that it was his last. But he could not come up from his knees, and in
this position his assailant bent over him, one hand on his forehead,
the other at the back of his neck, a knee against his breast.

Mackenzie tore at the great, stiff arms with his last desperate might,
perhaps staying a little the pressure that in a moment more must snap
his spine. As the assassin tightened this terrible grip Mackenzie's
face was lifted toward the sky. Overhead was the moon, clear-edged,
bright, in the dusk of the immensities beyond; behind the monster, who
paused that breath as in design to fill his victim's last moment with
a hope that he soon would mock, Mackenzie saw young Reid.

The youth was close upon the midnight strangler, stooping low. As the
terrible pressure on forehead and neck cracked his spine like a
breaking icicle, Mackenzie believed he shouted, putting into his voice
all that he felt of desperate need of help. And he saw young Reid
strike, and felt the breaking wrench of the cruel hands relax, and
fell down upon the ground like a dead man and knew no more.

Reid was there with the lantern, putting water on Mackenzie's head
when he again broke through the mists and followed the thread of his
soul back to his body. Reid was encouraging him to be steady, and to
take it easy, assuring him that he never saw a man put up such a fight
as the schoolmaster had all but lost.

Mackenzie sat up presently, with throbbing head, a feeling of bulging
in his eyeballs, his neck stiff from the wrenching it had received.
The great body of the man whom he had fought lay stretched in the
moonlight, face to the ground. The camp butcher knife was sticking in
his back. Mackenzie got to his feet, a dizziness over him, but a sense
of his obligation as clear as it ever was in any man.

"I owe you one for that; I'll not forget it in a hurry," he said,
giving Reid his hand.

"No, we're even on it," Reid returned. "He'd 'a' broke my neck in
another second if you hadn't made that tackle. Who is he, do you
know?"

"Turn him over," Mackenzie said.

Reid withdrew the knife, sticking it into the ground with as little
concern as if he had taken it from a