His dreams were rudely interrupted as Joe Lorey stepped ominously from behind the rock where he had waited for him.
"Hold up your hands!" the mountaineer commanded, with his rifle levelled at the advancing youth.
"Joe Lorey!" exclaimed Layson.
"You know what air between us. Your time air come. If you want to pray, do it quick, for my finger air itchin' to pull th' trigger."
Layson's blood and breeding told, in this emergency. He did not flinch a whit. "I'm ready," he said calmly. "I'm not afraid to die, though it's hard to meet death at the hands of a coward."
"Coward!" said the mountaineer, amazed. "You call me that?"
"The man who shoots another in cold blood, giving him no chance for his life, deserves no better name."
This appealed to Lorey. So had his father died—at the hands of one who killed him in cold blood, giving him no chance for his life. "You shan't die callin' me that!" he cried. He leaned his rifle against a nearby rock, threw his knife upon the ground beside it, pulled off his coat, and thus, unarmed, advanced upon his enemy. "We're ekal now," he said with grim intensity, and pointed to the chasm through which ran the stream which made Madge Brierly's refuge an island. "That gully air a hundred feet straight down," he said, "an' its bottom air kivered with rocks. When we're through, your body or mine'll lay there. Air you ready?"
Holton, tense with excitement, was watching every move of the two men from his hidden vantage point. Upon his face was the expression of an animal of prey.
"Ready!" said Frank, quietly.