It was as though Fate, with invisible touch, were setting her stage for the last act of this play, assembling the principals close to the Golden Sands where first they had made entrance.
The man and the girl came face to face with the Judge and marshal, who cried out upon seeing them, but as they reined in, out from the stairs beside them a man shot amid clatter and uproar.
“Give me a hand—quick!” he shouted to them.
“What’s up?” inquired the marshal.
“It’s murder! McNamara and Glenister!” He dashed back up the steps behind Voorhees, the Judge following, while muffled cries came from above.
The gambler turned towards the three men who were hurrying from the beach, and, recognizing Wheaton, called to him: “Untie my feet! Cut the ropes! Quick!”
“What’s the trouble?” the lawyer asked, but on hearing Glenister’s name bounded after the Judge, leaving one of his companions to free the rider. They could hear the fight now, and all crowded towards the door, Helen with her brother, in spite of his warning to stay behind.
She never remembered how she climbed those stairs, for she was borne along by that hypnotic power which drags one to behold a catastrophe in spite of his will. Reaching the room, she stood appalled; for the group she had joined watched two raging things that rushed at each other with inhuman cries, ragged, bleeding, fighting on a carpet of débris. Every loose and breakable thing had been ground to splinters as though by iron slugs in a whirling cylinder.
To this day, from Dawson to the Straits, from Unga to the Arctics, men tell of the combat wherever they foregather at flaring camp-fires or in dingy bunk-houses; and although some scout the tale, there are others who saw it and can swear to its truth. These say that the encounter was like the battle of bull moose in the rutting season, though more terrible, averring that two men like these had never been known in the land since the days of Vitus Bering and his crew; for their rancor had swollen till at feel of each other’s flesh they ran mad and felt superhuman strength. It is true, at any rate, that neither was conscious of the filling room, nor the cries of the crowd, even when the marshal forced himself through the wedged door and fell upon the nearest, which was Glenister. He came at an instant when the two had paused at arm’s-length, glaring with rage-drunken eyes, gasping the labored breath back into their lungs.
With a fling of his long arms the young man hurled the intruder aside so violently that his head struck the iron safe and he collapsed insensible. Then, without apparent notice of the interruption, the fight went on. It was seen during this respite that McNamara’s mouth was running water as though he were deathly sick, while every retch brought forth a groan. Helen heard herself crying: “Stop them! Stop them!” But no one seemed capable of interference. She heard her brother muttering and his breath coming heavily like that of the fighters, his body swaying in time to theirs. The Judge was ashy, imbecile, helpless.