"You remember what I said to you," he went on, "don't you, Thomas Ticehurst? I do, and I have kept my word. Ah! I have thought of this many times, many times. They tortured me and treated me like a dog in the jail you sent me to; they beat me, and kicked me, and starved me, but I never complained, lest my time there should be longer. And when I lay down at night I thought of the time when I should kill you. I knew it would come, and it has. But just now, when I saw you by the side of your own grave, looking down, I didn't know whether it was you or the other man, and I thought perhaps he had killed you. If it had been he, I would have killed him."
He paused, and I still stood there with a flood of thoughts rushing through me. What should I do? If he had taken his eyes off mine for but one single moment I would have sprung on him; but he did not, and while he talked, I heard the horses champing their bits in the brush. And cruelest of all, my own horse moved, and put his head through the branches and looked at me. Oh, if I were only on his back! But I did not speak.
"How shall I kill you?" said Matthias at last; "I would like to cut you to pieces!"
He paused again, and then another horse that I had not yet seen moved on the other side of the trail where he had come up. It had heard the others, and I knew it must be the animal he had ridden. It came out of the brush into the light of the fire, and I knew it was Elsie's. My heart gave a tremendous leap, and then stood still. How had he become possessed of it? I spoke, and in a voice I could not recognize as my own, so hoarse and terrible it was.
"How did you get that white horse, you villain?" I asked.
He looked at me fiercely without at first seeing how he could hurt me, and then a look of beast-like, cruel cunning came into his eyes.
"Ah!" said he, "I knew her! It was your girl's horse! How did I get it? Perhaps you would like to know? You will never see her again—never! Where is she now—where?"
He knew as little as I did, but the way he spoke, and the horrible things he put into his voice, made me boil with fury.
"You are a lying dog!" I cried, though he had said nothing that I should be so wrathful. He grinned diabolically, seeing how he had hurt me, and then laughed loud in an insulting, triumphant manner. It was too much, and I made one tremendous bound across the fire, and landed within three feet of him. He fired at the same moment, and whether he had wounded me or not I did not know; but the revolver went spinning two yards off, and we grappled in a death-hug.
I have said that Siwash Jim was a hard man to beat, but whether it was that I was weak with my wound or not, I found Matthias, who was mad with hate and fury, the most terrible antagonist I had ever tackled. He was as slippery as an eel, as lithe as a snake, and withal his grip was like that of a steel trap. Yet if I could but prevent him drawing his knife, which was at his belt, I did not care. I was his match if not in agility, at least in strength, and I would never let him go. We were for one moment still, after we grappled, and I trust I shall never see anything that looks more like a devil than his eyes, in which the light of the fire shone, while he gnashed his teeth and ground them until the foam and saliva oozed out of his mouth like a mad dog's venom. His forehead was seamed and wrinkled, his cheeks were sucked in and then blown out convulsively, and his whole aspect was more hideous than that of a beast of prey. And then the struggle began.