A terrible, sickening apprehension filtered into his numbed senses. Then, weaponless and forgetful of the prowess of the uncanny man-tiger within, the boy grabbed a huge wooden mallet near by and rushed inside.
As he ran toward the altar his fire-shot eyes swept the church for the old man. He saw only the towering hulk of the hated Burton standing erect, with hands in his trousers-pockets, calmly eyeing his approach.
When Lem reached the altar he halted short, dumb, fear-stricken, trembling. He stared at the bloody cross. He whirled around.
His eyes fell upon the still form on the bench, and he knew. With an inarticulate scream he fell one step backward and aimed a terrific, deadly blow at the unblinking, fishy eyes of the animal-headed thing before him.
Some minutes later Lem Lutts crouched upon a bench, hunched up, naked to the waist, broken, bleeding, panting, heaving, piteously weeping, his chin down till it touched his bare, lacerated breast.
Without, amidst the darkling shades of night, the she-panther crept from the gloomy haunting depths of the ravine, up to the very rim of the clearing. Up-reared, with her bowed fore-legs upon a scrub cedar stump, the big cat's spotted lips parted and she cried out a tremulous portentous wail across the dusk. Then came the sound of the pattering of padded jungle feet as she skulked back to her lair down in the bristling bowels of the shadow-peopled gulch.
The man of iron who stood scowling over the conquered, broken youth, felt a compelling loneliness picking upon his steely nerves.
"Come, Lutts! Let's hike out of here," ordered the detective as he pulled the stupefied boy to his feet.
He half dragged Lem to the door of the church, saying:
"I guess I'll take you down to Frankfort. Mebby when you're there a while you'll tell where that damn whisky shop is you've been running up here the last hundred years."