Thady came forward, wordless, his gaze fastened upon Dorales, deep anger gleaming in those intensely black eyes. Abel Dorales, ashen white, edged around the side of the bowlder. His hand drifted to his pocket; it flashed up again with a revolver.
But as Abel Dorales swung down that revolver, as he drew down on Thady Shea for a desperate ghost-quelling shot, something snaked out through the air—something that seemed to leap from the expert arm of Mehitabel Crump. It curled about the wrist of Abel Dorales, it curled and clung with vicious snap about his hand and fingers; as the head of a rattlesnake is snapped and tugged from his body with one whipcrack, so the revolver was torn from the hand of Dorales and sent flying out upon the stones.
Thady Shea flung himself upon Dorales.
As has been previously seen, Thady Shea knew nothing about the science and art of fighting. His was a blind, primitive, untutored lust for vengeance. He had heard that resonant voice telling the story of his death; he had heard, lifting to him above the crest of the hogback, that false tale designed to blacken his memory, and now he plunged headlong at Abel Dorales, angered as he had never been angered in his life.
Stricken and all unstrung by what he had taken to be an apparition, Abel Dorales tried to stumble away, cowering. But in a moment the furious, clumsy blows of Thady Shea proved that here was real flesh and blood; Shea landed one smash that all but stove in the ribs of his enemy. In his arms was terrific strength, had he but known how to use it. Perhaps it was as well that the knowledge was lacking, else Dorales had died very brutally and quickly.
Still retreating, Dorales gathered himself together and faced the storm. He saw that this was no ghost, but a man of flesh and blood—a man very weary, very terrible, a man whose consuming anger swept away all sense of bodily hurt and weariness. Dorales blocked the furious blows, then, most incautiously, allowed Thady Shea to clinch.
That was near to being the death of Dorales, for now the terrific strength of Thady Shea poured forth like a flood. The two men locked, reeled back and forth, went plunging down to the stones. They rolled down the hillside; they fought with utter madness—yet ever the steel arms were tightening about the body of Dorales, ever the ribs of Dorales were cracking and giving inward.
In that primitive and sickening struggle, neither man saw or gave heed to anything else than the face of his foe. Neither man observed that, as they upheaved and rolled again, they had come upon something that gleamed like needles in the sunlight; something wide and gaping that lay there unseen and inconspicuous among the stones.
Desperate, feeling the very life wrenching out of him, Abel Dorales flung loose one arm and attempted to clutch a stone, wherewith to batter at the deadly face above him. The two men writhed again, heaved upward, fell heavily in a twisted mass. Something thin and piercing, something that gleamed like white needles in the sunlight, ripped the skin of Dorales’ outflung arm. Upon that arm fell all the plunging weight of Thady Shea, grinding it down upon the stones, grinding with it the gaping jaws of that rattler’s head, grinding arm and jaws until the skin, from wrist to elbow, was burst and ripped asunder as cloth is ripped before a knife.
The pain of this unseen, blind hurt fired Dorales into frantic efforts. He flung Shea backward; he hammered in one blow and another, rocking back Shea’s head and blinding him. Dorales gained his feet once more, writhing free, panting. He was freed of Shea’s grip. His arm was dripping blood. Dorales looked down at Thady Shea, who was weakly rising to throw himself forward anew—then Abel Dorales turned. He turned and ran, bounding and sliding to the cañon floor in great leaps, running wildly and blindly past the two automobiles, running from the vengeance of the man whom he had tried to murder, the man who now seemed to be more than man. But Thady Shea did not pursue, for now weakness and dizziness had come upon him, and after two steps Shea fell forward.