reeled, and his legs colliding with a bench, he fell against the wall.
Before he could recover, his assailant stepped in between his wide-flung
hands and throttled him, beating his head violently against the logs. The
fellow undertook to grapple with him, at which Emerson wrenched himself
free, and, stepping back, spoke in a quivering voice which Fraser had
never heard before:

"I'm just playing with you now--I don't want to hurt you."

"Get out of my house! Ay got orders!" cried the watchman wildly, and made
for him again. It was evident that the man was not lacking in stupid
courage, but Emerson, driven to it, stepped aside, and swung heavily. The
squaw in the doorway screamed, and the Swede fell full length. Again Boyd
was upon him, the restraint of the past long weeks now unbridled, his
temper unchecked. He dragged his victim through the store-room, grinding
his face into the floor at every effort to rise. He forced him to his own
door-sill, jerked the door open, and kicked him out into the snow; then
barred the entrance, and returned to the warmth of the logs, his face
convulsed and his lips working.

"Fingerless" Fraser gazed at him queerly, as if at some utterly strange
phenomenon, then drawled, with a sly chuckle:

"Well, well, you're bloody gentle, I must say. I didn't think it was in
you."

When the other vouchsafed no answer, he took his pipe from a pocket of his
steaming mackinaw, and filled it from a tobacco-box on the window-sill;
then, leaning back in his chair, he propped his feet up on the table and
sighed luxuriously, as he murmured: