His rage had
the vehemence of a distracted woman's, and he threw himself upon his
enemy, inadequate now as always, but at last unaware and unconscious.
They clutched and rocked together. From the moment of the grapple it
was unequal--a sick and wounded creature struggling in arms that were
as iron bands about his puny frame. But as a furious child fights for
a moment successfully with its enraged elder, he tore and beat at his
opponent, striking blindly at the face he loathed, writhing in the grip
that bent his body and sent the air in sobbing gasps from his lungs.
Their trampling was muffled on the stone, their shadows leaped in
contorted waverings out from their feet and back again. Broken and
twisted in Courant's arms, David felt no pain only the blind hate, saw
the livid plain heaving about him, the white ball of the sun, and
twisting through the reeling distance the pale thread of the Emigrant
Trail, glancing across his ensanguined vision like a shuttle weaving
through a blood-red loom.
They staggered to the edge of the plateau and there hung. It was only
for a moment, a last moment of strained and swaying balance.
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