the last cartridge, he noted that the two remaining Apaches had
dropped their rifles and were leaping upon him to take him alive.

He brought his clubbed weapon down upon the head of one of them,
crushing his skull. At the same instant Lane was borne to the
ground by the other Apache, who, seizing him by the throat, began
throttling him into insensibility. In desperation, Lane
bethought himself of the cliff, and, by a mighty effort, whirled
over upon his captor toward the precipice. The ground sloped
slightly in that direction, and the combatants rolled over and
over to the very edge of the cliff, where the Indian, for the
first time realizing that the prospector's purpose was to hurl
both of them to destruction, loosened his hold upon the
prospector's throat that he might use his hands to brace himself
against the otherwise inevitable plunge into the valley below. In
an instant Lane's hands were at the Indian's throat, and in
another turn he was uppermost, and kneeling upon his foe at the
very verge of the precipice.

Both combatants were now thoroughly exhausted. Lane concentrated
all his remaining strength in throttling the savage. But, just
as the tense form beneath him grew lax with evident
unconsciousness, and head fell limply back, extending over the
edge of cliff, his own head was jerked violently backward by a
noose cast around his lacerated neck.

When Lane recovered consciousness he found himself lying on his
back, bound hand and foot by a lariat, and looking up into a
grinning face that he recognized.