For perhaps three-quarters of an hour after Blossom had recovered consciousness the second time, it had pleased her captor to sit across the narrow way from her, gloating with a bestial satisfaction over her helplessness, while he poured white stuff from bottle to tin cup.
Despite the advantages of his position, Ratler had thoughts which were disconcerting. At his hands lay the final opportunity to glut his long-starved hunger for revenge: to glut it fully and in a fashion of beastly brutality, and for that he had waited with a singleness of thought and purpose.
But behind him to-night he must leave no witness, and as he approached his task, he found that his nerves needed the steadying of strong drink—and yet more strong drink. Out of the flask he was not only drawing appeasement of thirst, but fuel for determination.
For a while he had even dozed while the girl, bound hand and foot, had shudderingly watched his dissolute and depraved face.
Then at the end he had risen, stretched his long arms and sauntered insolently over, looking down while he phrased repulsive compliments to her beauty.
Tiring eventually of his cat-and-mouse deliberateness, Ratler leaned down and, putting his arm about her waist, drew her up to him. Then it was that with all the revulsion that was in her she had screamed not once but until his hand had choked off her breath—and at that instant she had heard the shout from beyond the cave's entrance.
Webb heard it, too, and hurled the woman away from him, suddenly brought back to something nearer sobriety by the shock. He wheeled and trained his pistol on the entrance. He had laid aside his rifle and there was no time now to hunt for it. Bear Cat would have to stoop and edge his way into the place and in the process he could be easily dispatched.
But while he waited Ratler's knees shook and when, instead of crawling, he saw a shape dive almost horizontally through the aperture his courage evaporated. The lantern was badly placed and it confused the man inside because it darkened the opening while it left him in plain sight. Ratler's revolver was spitting venomously but ineffectually. His hand was unsteady and his eye confused. The drunkard was reeling as he fought and after a dazed moment he felt himself caught in a bone-breaking embrace while the butt of a pistol hammered the consciousness out of his skull.
Turner Stacy was a wild man now. He stumbled blindly out of the cave dragging a limp figure behind him, and when he straightened up again and wiped his sweat-streaming face he had hurled the thing bodily outward, where the ravine dropped down a hundred feet.