The Roof Tree

by Charles Neville Buck

"I reckon I'll do my best," said Rowlett, sullenly; "I hain't skeercely got no rather in ther matter nohow."

Thornton stripped off his coat and rolled his sleeves high and the other man followed suit. Bas even grinned sardonically in appreciation when the other at length thrust his pistol under a rock which it strained his strength to lift. The man who got that weapon out would need to be one who had time and deliberation at his disposal—not one who snatched it up in any short-winded interval of struggle.

Then the two stood glaring into each other's faces with the naked savagery of wild beasts, and under the stress of their hate-lust the whites of their eyes were already bloodshot and fever-hot with murder-bent.

Yet with an impulse that came through even that red fog of fury Parish Thornton turned his head and looked for the fraction of an instant down upon the gray roof and the green tree where the shadows lay lengthed in the valley—and in that half second of diverted gaze Rowlett launched himself like a charging bull, with head down to ram his adversary's solar plexus and with arms outstretched for a bone-breaking grapple.

It was a suddenness which even with suddenness expected came bolt-like, and Thornton, leaping sidewise, caught its passing force and stumbled, but grappled and carried his adversary down with him. The two rolled in an embrace that strained ribs inward on panting lungs, leg locking leg, and fingers clutching for a vulnerable hold. But Thornton slipped eel-like out of the chancery that would have crushed him into helplessness and sprang to his feet, and if Rowlett was slower, it was by only a shade of difference.

They stood, with sweat already flowing in tiny freshets out of their pores and eyes blazing with murderous fire. They crouched and circled, advancing step by step, each warily sparring for an advantage and ready to plunge in or leap sidewise. Then came the impact of bone and flesh once more, and both went down, Thornton's face pressed against that of his enemy as they fell, and Rowlett opened and clamped his jaws as does a bull-dog trying for a grip upon the jugular.

That battle was homerically barbaric and starkly savage. It was fought between two wild creatures who had shed their humanity: one the stronger and more massive of brawn; the other more adroit and resourceful. But the teeth of the conspirator closed on the angle of the jawbone instead of the neck—and found no fleshy hold, and while they twisted and writhed with weird incoherencies of sound going up in the smother of dust, Bas Rowlett felt the closing of iron fingers on his throat. While he clawed and gripped and kicked to break the strangle, his eyes seemed to swell and burn and start from their sockets, and the patch of darkening sky went black.

It was only the collapse of the human mass in his arms into dead weight that brought Parish Thornton again out of his mania and back to consciousness. The battle was over, and as he drew his arms away his enemy sank shapeless and limp at his feet.

For a few seconds more Thornton stood rocking on unsteady legs, then, with a final and supreme effort, he stooped and lifted the heavy weight that hung sagging like one newly dead and not yet rigid.

With his burden Parish staggered to the cliff's edge and swung his man from side to side, gaining momentum.