They fell and stumbled so that neither could much damage the other at first.  Banion knew he must keep the impounded hand back from the knife sheath or he was done.  Thus close, he could make no escape.  He fought fast and furiously, striving to throw, to bend, to beat back the body of a man almost as strong as himself, and now a maniac in rage and fear.

* * * * *

The sound of the rifle shot rang through the little defile.  To Jackson, shaving off bits of sweet meat between thumb and knife blade, it meant the presence of a stranger, friend or foe, for he knew Banion had carried no weapon with him.  His own long rifle he snatched from its pegs.  At a long, easy lope he ran along the path which carried across the face of the ravine.  His moccasined feet made no sound.  He saw no one in the creek bed or at the long turn.  But new, there came a loud, wordless cry which he knew was meant for him.  It was Will Banion’s voice.

The two struggling men grappled below him had no notion of how long they had fought.  It seemed an age, and the denouement yet another age deferred.  But to them came the sound of a voice: 

“Git away, Will!  Stand back!”

It was Jackson.

They both, still gripped, looked up the bank.  The long barrel of a rifle, foreshortened to a black point, above it a cold eye, fronted and followed them as they swayed.  The crooked arm of the rifleman was motionless, save as it just moved that deadly circle an inch this way, an inch back again.

Banion knew that this was murder, too, but he knew that naught on earth could stay it now.  To guard as much as he could against a last desperate knife thrust even of a dying man, he broke free and sprang back as far as he could, falling prostrate on his back as he did so, tripped by an unseen stone.  But Sam Woodhull was not upon him now, was not willing to lose his own life in order to kill.  For just one instant he looked up at the death staring down on him, then turned to run.

There was no place where he could run.  The voice of the man above him called out sharp and hard.

“Halt!  Sam Woodhull, look at me!”

He did turn, in horror, in fascination at sight of the Bright Angel.  The rifle barrel to his last gaze became a small, round circle, large as a bottle top, and around it shone a fringed aura of red and purple light.  That might have been the eye.

Steadily as when he had held his friend’s life in his hand, sighting five inches above his eyes, the old hunter drew now above the eyes of his enemy.  When the dry report cut the confined air of the valley, the body of Sam Woodhull started forward.  The small blue hole an inch above the eyes showed the murderer’s man hunt done.

CHAPTER XLIV

YET IF LOVE LACK