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Jopp was bound to a chair by a lasso. Both arms were fastened to the chair-arm, and beneath them, on the floor, were bowls into which blood dropped from his punctured wrists.

He had hardly taken it all in–the work of an instant–when he saw crouched in a corner, madness in his eyes, his half-breed Vigon. He grasped the situation in a flash. Vigon had gone mad, had lain in wait in Jopp’s house, and, when the man he hated had seated himself in the chair, had lassoed him, bound him, and was slowly bleeding him to death.

He had no time to think. Before he could act Vigon was upon him also, frenzy in his eyes, a knife clutched in his hand. Reason had fled, and he only saw in O’Ryan the frustrator of his revenge. He had watched the drip, drip from his victim’s wrists with a dreadful joy.

They were man and man, but O’Ryan found in this grisly contest a vaster trial of strength than in the fight upon the stage a few hours ago. The first lunge that Vigon made struck him on the tip of the shoulder and drew blood; but he caught the hand holding the knife in an iron grasp, while the half-breed, with superhuman strength, tried in vain for the long, brown throat of the man for whom he had struck oil. As they struggled and twisted, the eyes of the victim in the chair watched them with agonized emotions. For him it was life or death. He could not cry out–his mouth was gagged; but to O’Ryan his groans were like a distant echo of his own hoarse gasps as he fought his desperate fight. Terry was as one in an awful dream battling with vague, impersonal powers which slowly strangled his life, yet held him back in torture from the final surrender.

For minutes they struggled. At last O’Ryan’s strength came to a point of breaking, for Vigon was a powerful man, and to this was added a madman’s energy. He felt that the end was coming. But all at once, through the groans of the victim in the chair, Terry became conscious of noises outside–such noises as he had heard before he entered the house, only nearer and louder. At the same time he heard a horse’s hoofs, then a knock at the door, and a voice calling, “Jopp! Jopp!”

He made a last desperate struggle, and shouted hoarsely.

An instant later there were footsteps in the room, followed by a cry of fright and amazement.

It was Gow Johnson. He had come to warn Constantine Jopp that a crowd were come to tar and feather him, and to get him away on his own horse.

Now he sprang to the front door, called to the approaching crowd for help, then ran back to help O’Ryan. A moment later a dozen men had Vigon secure, and had released Constantine Jopp, now almost dead from loss of blood.

As they took the gag from his mouth and tied their handkerchiefs round his bleeding wrists, Jopp sobbed aloud. His eyes were fixed on Terry O’Ryan. Terry met the look, and grasped the limp hand lying on the chair-arm.

“I’m sorry, O’Ryan, I’m sorry for all I’ve done to you,” Jopp sobbed. “I was a sneak, but I want to own it. I want to be square now. You can tar and feather me, if you like. I deserve it.” He looked at the others. “I deserve it,” he repeated.

“That’s what the boys had thought would be appropriate,” said Gow Johnson, with a dry chuckle, and the crowd looked at one another and winked. The wink was kindly, however. “To own up and take your gruel!” was the easiest way to touch the men of the prairie.

A half-hour later the roisterers, who had meant to carry Constantine Jopp on a rail, carried Terry O’Ryan on their shoulders through the town, against his will. As they passed the house where Miss Mackinder lived, some one shouted:

“Are you watching the rise of Orion?”

Many a time thereafter Terry O’Ryan and Molly Mackinder looked at the galaxy in the evening sky with laughter and with pride. It had played its part with Fate against Constantine Jopp and the little widow at Jansen. It had never shone so brightly as on the night when Vigon struck oil on O’Ryan’s ranch. But Vigon had no memory of that. Such is the irony of life.