"Hold on there!" cried Silver Jack. "You let them horses alone! You damn little runt! Let them alone I say!" The robe was kicked aside, and Silver Jack prepared to descend.
Richard Darrell twisted his feet out of his snow-shoe straps. "You can't take that whiskey into camp," he repeated simply.
"Now look here, Darrell," said the other in even tones, "don't you make no mistake. I ain't selling this whiskey; I'm giving it away. The law can't touch me. You ain't any right to say where I'll go, and, by God, I'm going where I please!"
"You got to go back with that whiskey," replied Darrell.
Silver Jack threw aside his coat, and advanced. "You get out of my way, or I'll kick you out, like I done at Bay City."
In an instant two blows were exchanged. The first marked Silver Jack's bronze-red face just to the left of his white eyebrow. The second sent Richard Darrell gasping and sobbing into the snow-bank ten feet away. He arose with the blood streaming from beneath his mustache. His eager, nervous face was white; his chipmunk eyes narrowed; his great hands, held palm backward, clutched spasmodically. With the stealthy motion of a cat he approached his antagonist, and sprang. Silver Jack stood straight and confident, awaiting him. Three times the aggressor was knocked entirely off his feet. The fourth he hit against the cutter body, and his fingers closed on the axe which all voyagers through the forest carry as a matter of course.
"He's gettin' ugly. Come on, Hank!" cried Silver Jack.
The other man, with a long score to pay the walking boss, seized the iron starting-bar, and descended. Out from the inscrutable white forest murder breathed like a pestilential air. The two men talked about it easily, confidently.
"You ketch him on one side, and I'll come in on the other," said the man named Hank, gripping his short, heavy bar.
The forest lay behind; the forest, easily penetrable to a man in moccasins. Richard Darrell could at any moment have fled beyond the possibility of pursuit. This had become no mere question of a bar-room fisticuff, but of life and death. He had begged abjectly from the pain of a cuff on the ear; now he merely glanced over his shoulder toward the safety that lay beyond. Then, with a cry, he whirled the axe about his head and threw it directly at the second of his antagonists. The flat of the implement struck heavily, full on the man's forehead. He fell, stunned. Immediately the other two precipitated themselves on the weapons. This time Silver Jack secured the axe, while Darrell had to content himself with the short, heavy bar. The strange duel recommenced, while the horses, mildly curious, gazed through the steam of their nostrils at their warring masters.