He pulled two bents from a tuft of the mountain grass growing on a hillock near us—one shorter, one longer,—and presented them to me for choice.
“You can trust me!” he said, with a wildly ironical smile.
To hesitate was to be shot in cold blood. I felt this, and acted with resolution.
“I can trust you, Marc.”
“Short fires first!”
I pulled, and drew the short bent.
He took a cap from a small cylindrical metal case he carried in his pocket, and fixed it on the nipple of his pistol. Then he handed the weapon to me.
I took it from him, examined it with the greatest care—I see it now; it was an old-fashioned firearm of Spanish make,—stood a pace only back from him, fixed my eye on his, with a sudden jerk flung the pistol fifty paces behind me, and throwing myself upon Marc, bore him to the ground, and held him there in a vice!
Then began our struggle for life!
At first, the advantage was mine. I was a-top. In strength we had always been pretty equally matched. Sometimes I had been able to throw Marc, sometimes he had thrown me. Now the contest was unequal. It is true I had the advantage of fighting for life, but the struggle was with the supernatural strength of a madman. I had dropped my stick before taking the pistol from the hand of Marc. In this tussle it would have been of no service to me. This was man to man.