This time he held to his feet.
"Bah, this is like striking a baby!" exclaimed Dixon. "What are you
fighting about, Gravois? Is it a crime up here to kiss a pretty girl?"
"I am going to kill you!" said Jean as coolly as before.
There was something terribly calm and decisive in his voice. He was
not excited. He was not afraid. His fingers did not go near the long
knife in his belt. Slowly the laugh faded from Dixon's face, and tense
lines gathered around his mouth as Jean circled about him.
"Come, we don't want trouble like this," he urged. "I'm sorry--if
Melisse didn't like it."
"I am going to kill you!" repeated Jean.
There was an appalling confidence in his eyes. From those eyes Dixon
found himself retreating rather than from the man. They followed him,
never taking themselves from his face. The fire in them grew deeper.
Two dull red spots began to glow in Jean's cheeks, and he laughed
softly when he suddenly leaped in so that the Englishman struck at
him--and missed.
It was the science of the forest man pitted against that of another
world. For sport Jean had played with wounded lynx; his was the
quickness of sight, of instinct--without the other's science; the
quickness of the great loon that had often played this same game with
his rifle-fire, of the sledge-dog whose ripping fangs carried death so
quickly that eyes could not follow.
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