For months most men had avoided Woodhull.  It was known that he was on a man hunt.  His questions, his movements, his changes of locality showed that; and Woodhull was one of those who cannot avoid asseverance, needing it for their courage sake.  Now morose and brooding, now loudly profane, now laughing or now aloof, his errand in these unknown hills was plain.  Well, he was not alone among men whose depths were loosed.  Some time his hour might come.

It had come!  He stared now full into the face of his enemy!  He at last had found him.  Here stood his enemy, unarmed, delivered into his hands.

For one instant the two stood, staring into one another’s eyes.  Banion’s advance had been silent.  Woodhull was taken as much unawares as he.

It had been Woodhull’s purpose to get a stand above the sluices, hidden by the angle, where he could command the reach of the stream bed where Banion and Jackson last had been working.  He had studied the place before, and meant to take no chances.  His shot must be sure.

But now, in his climbing on the steep hillside, his rifle was in his left hand, downhill, and his footing, caught as he was with one foot half raised, was insecure.  At no time these last four hours had his opportunity been so close—­or so poor—­as precisely now!

He saw Will Banion’s eyes, suddenly startled, quickly estimating, looking into his own.  He knew that behind his own eyes his whole foul soul lay bared—­the soul of a murderer.

Woodhull made a swift spring down the hill, scrambling, half erect, and caught some sort of stance for the work which now was his to do.  He snarled, for he saw Banion stoop, unarmed.  It would do his victim no good to run.  There was time even to exult, and that was much better in a long-deferred matter such as this.

“Now, damn you, I’ve got you!”

He gave Banion that much chance to see that he was now to die.

Half leaning, he raised the long rifle to its line and touched the trigger.

The report came; and Banion fell.  But even as he wheeled and fell, stumbling down the hillside, his flung arm apparently had gained a weapon.  It was not more than the piece of rotten quartz he had picked up and planned to examine later.  He flung it straight at Woodhull’s face—­an act of chance, of instinct.  By a hair it saved him.

Firing and missing at a distance of fifty feet, Woodhull remained not yet a murderer in deed.  In a flash Banion gathered and sprang toward him as he stood in a half second of consternation at seeing his victim fall and rise again.  The rifle carried but the one shot.  He flung it down, reached for his heavy knife, raising an arm against the second piece of rock which Banion flung as he closed.  He felt his wrist caught in an iron grip, felt the blood gush where his temple was cut by the last missile.  And then once more, on the narrow bared floor that but now was patterned in parquetry traced in yellow, and soon must turn to red, it came to man and man between them—­and it was free!