FOR THE ROSE OF AMERICA
"I tell thee, prince, it shall not be!" shouted Kard hoarsely. "He hath saved this day the life of Kard, and he shall not die thus. Look to thyself, thou man of the snows," he flung over his shoulder, "thy death waits!"
"Away, fool!" raged Morolas, and whirled the smith from his path with a sweep of his arm. He snatched a spear from one of the hunters, and would have repeated his cast.
That throw was never made.
All had happened in the space that a man might count ten. In one glance Polaris accepted the situation. His head shot forward, every muscle in his body flexed, his face hardened and under his white-furred frontlet his tawny eyes blazed like molten brass. He leaped from the side of the sledge with lightning swiftness, cleared the space intervening with a single bound, and tore the lifted spear from the hand of Morolas. He threw the weapon on the ground, and for an instant the two men faced each other, foot to foot and eye to eye.
Neither spoke. From his superior height the prince glared down at the son of the snows.
With a motion so quick that the eye could not follow the blow, Polaris struck, from the shoulder and with doubled fist. The tall prince crumpled and went down, hurled fully his own length by the fierceness of the blow.
He never moved again. The fist of Polaris, impelled by all the mighty strength stored in his muscles of steel, had struck Morolas full on the breast-bone. Such was the power of the stroke that the man's chest had caved in before it, and his heart had stopped.
He lay scarcely twitching, and the dark blood welled from his lips and stained the white snow.
Never before had Polaris struck a man in anger with his naked hand, and he was momentarily shaken by the result of his own blow. He hesitated but an instant, however, for his blood was up. A Sardanian hunter knelt in the snow by his dead master.