Ten feet away, Markham sat down to screw the skates to his heels and adjust the straps. The revolver lay at his side, and he watched Peters sharply as he worked.
Peters, a desperate purpose forming in his mind, was awaiting the moment when he could spring to the attack. He was not to be conquered in that way. There was plenty of fight in him, and Markham would discover it to his cost.
Markham worked rapidly. The skates were on, and snugly buckled, and he was just rising when Peters went after him, with a short run and a slide. But if Peters was quick, Markham was a shade quicker.
Crack!
The revolver exploded in the air, and Peters’ left arm seemed suddenly to have been scorched with a hot iron. The shock caused him to lose his footing, and he fell in a sprawl on the slippery surface of the river.
“You would have it!” shouted Markham fiercely. “That’s something more for you to tell Bailey!”
The last words faded in mellow ring of sliding steel. Peters, sitting up on the ice, and clasping his numbed arm with his right hand, watched Markham slip from sight around the curve at the foot of Bear Butte.
IV.
Peters was thinking less of the pain in his arm than he was of the rascally work of Peter Markham. The fellow must be mad, to make such an attack! He had planned the whole thing, of course, and had armed himself before leaving Morton’s. Reaching the butte ahead of Peters, he had gone into hiding against the moment Peters should come skating down the river. Then, by way of making his treachery more contemptible, he had called to Peters for help, only to threaten him with a revolver and steal his skates.