Screaming again, she plunged straight down the hillside in a mad race to reach the scene of action. Running like a deer, stumbling and falling, her breath coming in short gasps, she ran wildly on. Snarls of the thorny crab-apple tore at her, devil’s-club lacerated her face and hands, but she felt no pain. “O God,” she prayed aloud, “help me save him! Help me save him!”
Donald’s face blanched at the sound of the axe as it bit into the heavy wire cable. He looked down at the jagged rocks and seething waters below. Then with closed eyes and a prayer on his lips he tore in mad frenzy at the rope. Desperately he tugged with both hands, although the pain from his broken wrist sent a wave of torment up his arm that sickened him.
No man can measure the speed of thought in a crisis; even the sluggish brain of the Breed functioned rapidly. Connie was not for him. Her happiness was bound up in the man working feverishly at the haul-back. There was not one chance in a million that he would gain the safety of the cliff before the strands parted to plunge him to eternity. As he heard the crashing of Connie’s slender body as she tore down the hill, a softness crept into his eyes. With a speed incredible in one with his pitiful deformity, he ran in a series of bounding steps to the edge of the bluff. The noise of tumbling waters drowned the sound of his approach. Just as Hand raised his axe for the final blow, the muscular arms of the Breed were flung about him. Emitting a startled curse, the big man turned and with a twist of his powerful shoulders flung his dusky assailant to the ground. As he rose Hand swung viciously at him with the axe.
With a quick movement the Breed dodged, and the weapon flashed over his head, flew from the big man’s hands, and struck his confederate, a glancing blow on the shoulder that brought from him a howl of pain. Again the Breed’s arms closed about his adversary’s waist. Mad with the pain in his shoulder, the foreigner drew a long, keen knife, circled warily about the two wrestling men until he found an opening, then plunged the knife to the hilt in the Breed’s left side. The stricken man slithered from his opponent’s arms and fell a crumpled heap to the ground.
Sick and giddy, Donald stumbled from the bucket, seized the axe and advanced weakly toward Hand. Hand’s accomplice, taking one look at the prostrate body, turned and fled terror-stricken to the woods. Hand hesitated for a moment, then followed heavily after.
At this moment, Connie, with clothes torn and hair dishevelled, broke from the woods, and with a cry of pity flung herself to the ground by the Breed’s side and placed his head on her lap. The eyes of the wounded man flickered slowly open. He tried to speak, but a strong convulsion shook his frame from head to foot and he writhed in desperate agony.
Connie’s face as she lifted it to Donald was drawn with grief. “Get me some water, please,” she said brokenly.
The dying man’s lips moved. Connie leaned closer.
“I—I—love you,” he whispered faintly, “I—saved him—for you.”
A ghastly pallor spread over his features and his lips were widely parted in a struggle for breath. Again his lips moved in a fluttering whisper. “Connie—will—you—kiss me?”