“It's got to be the end,” repeated DeBar, in a low voice. “If we get out of this, and fight, and you win, it'll be because I'm dead, Phil. D'ye understand? I'll be dead when the fight ends, if you win. That'll be one end.”
“But if you win, Bill.”
A flash of joy shot into DeBar's eyes.
“Then that'll be the other end,” he said more softly still. He pointed to the big Mackenzie hound. “I said he was next to my best friend an earth, Phil. The other—is a girl—who lived back there—when it happened, years and years ago. She's thirty now, and she's stuck to me, and prayed for me, and believed in me for—a'most since we were kids together, an' she's written to me—'Frank Symmonds'—once a month for ten years. God bless her heart! That is what's kept me alive, and in every letter she's begged me to let her come to me, wherever I was. But—I guess the devil didn't get quite all of me, for I couldn't, 'n' wouldn't. But I've give in now, and we've fixed it up between us. By this time she's on her way to my brothers in South America, and if I win—when we fight—I'm going where she is. And that's the other end, Phil, so you see why I'm happy. There's sure to be an end of it for me—soon.”
He bowed his wild, unshorn head in his mittened hands, and for a time there was silence between them.
Philip broke it, almost in a whisper.
“Why don't you kill me—here—now-while I'm sitting helpless beside you, and you've a knife in your belt?”
DeBar lifted his head slowly and looked with astonishment into his companion's face.
“I'm not a murderer!” he said.
“But you've killed other men,” persisted Philip.