Samson stood rigid. Here was the confession of one murderer, with no
denial from the other. The truce was of. Why should he wait? Cataracts
seemed to thunder in his brain, and yet he stood there, his hand in his
coat-pocket, clutching the grip of a magazine pistol. Samson South the
old, and Samson South the new, were writhing in the life-and-death
grapple of two codes. Then, before decision came, he heard a sharp
report inside, and the heavy fall of a body to the floor.
A wildly excited figure came plunging through the door, and Samson's
left hand swept out, and seized its shoulder in a sudden vise grip.
"Do you know me?" he inquired, as the mountaineer pulled away and
crouched back with startled surprise and vicious frenzy.
"No, damn ye! Git outen my road!" Aaron thrust his cocked rifle close
against the stranger's face. From its muzzle came the acrid stench of
freshly burned powder. "Git outen my road afore I kills ye!"
"My name is Samson South."
Before the astounded finger on the rifle trigger could be crooked,
Samson's pistol spoke from the pocket, and, as though in echo, the
rifle blazed, a little too late and a shade too high, over his head, as
the dead man's arms went up.