“What is that?”
His voice rang out with sudden fierceness. “That you are the traitor who sold us out!” Instantly he pinned Freeman’s arms to his sides in a tight embrace, rendering helpless, as he thought, that pistol hand. “And now you are going to pay for it!”
Freeman must have been startled, but he was not the man to lose a second. He dropped the reins, twisted his body like a snake in the powerful grip that held him, bringing his right side toward Drexel.
“Am I?” he cried with a sardonic laugh. And without trying to draw out his hand, he fired through the pocket.
The bullet missed, but at the shot the big black snorted and sprang away at a frenzied gallop. Drexel gave Freeman no chance for a second shot. He loosed his embrace and seized Freeman’s right wrist. The pistol came out and instantly the four hands were struggling over it—Freeman’s to aim it for but a moment, Drexel’s to wrench it free.
Drexel had known that the man was stronger than he seemed, but he had not guessed that that lean body possessed such steely strength as it now revealed. Each time he tried a twist or a trick, Freeman matched it, and laughed tauntingly at his failure. So, swaying about in the tiny sleigh, each struggling for an instant’s possession of that which meant the other’s death, they dashed past snow-shrouded shrubbery, past statues done up in straw to ward off the marble-chipping cold—out of the park—down an incline and out upon the frozen river. And still they struggled, and still the big black galloped madly over the ice.
Drexel saw that his gaining the pistol was doubtful, and he determined that at least Freeman should have no advantage from it. As they struggled he cautiously shifted his grip on the pistol till his forefinger slipped into the trigger guard. As swiftly as his finger could work, he six times pulled the trigger, and six times harmless fire spurted toward the stars. The seventh time he pulled there was only a sharp click that announced the pistol to be empty.
Instantly he dropped the weapon and drove his right fist into Freeman’s face. The blow unbalanced Freeman; he went reeling backward from the sleigh, dragging Drexel with him, and the horse dashed away through the night.
Locked together, the two fell heavily upon the ice and rolled over and over. In the same moment that Drexel had struck Freeman with his right, his left had darted out and clutched the spy’s black-bearded throat; and now as they tumbled and twisted about, his hand held on with savage, deathlustful grip, and his fist drove again and again into the spy’s face. Freeman beat the wrist of the hand at his throat between hammer-like fists, but the hand only bit the deeper.
“You’ll never play Judas again!” Drexel gloatingly gasped into the other’s face, which gleamed defiantly back into his. Somehow he realized that they lay fighting in the shadow of Saints Peter and Paul, where this man had sent Sonya. He drove in his fists more fiercely. Freeman’s struggles grew weaker, yet he spoke not a word for mercy; whatever he was, he knew how to die game. Then the struggling ceased, and the body lay limp. Still Drexel’s vengeance-mad fists drove home.