BILL JOHNSON IN A RAGE,
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one long stride stood over Black, and was rapidly severing the thongs which bound his limbs.
" Bill, for God's sake don't!—he's raving mad—he'll knock down right and left!" said Fitz rapidly, while the party scattered on all sides.
" Tarnation !" roared Bill, furiously, as he assisted the madman to his feet; " Yer white-livered younkers! and these cowhide strings 'nough to make a man like Jim Black rarein' tearin' mad ? Tie a hunter like some chicken-stealin' sneak in the States, will yer? just for hangin' a man, too ! Pretty spot o' work ! got any bull-neck Judges ; got any weazen faced lawyers out here to swindle a man's rights away, have yer ? mad, is he ? Try to serve Bill Johnson so if yer want to see somebody mad. Who done this ? Knock down as many as you please, Jim Black r Bill Johnson's here, and old Sue."
I heard the clicking of rifle-locks around me at this. Bill patted the madman heavily on the shoulder as he gave him this last exhortation to avenge the indignity which it seemed he hastily supposed had been put upon him. Black, who had been standing in a sort of stupor, was thoroughly roused by the friendly blow, and glaring his eyes in the face of his old comrade for a moment, with a loud guttural. shriek sprang suddenly at his throat. Nobody interfered, and now the stern and powerful hunter exhibited his finest traits. His iron fingers tore away the frantic grasp of the madman from his throat; then closing with him he clasped him in the bear-hug of those long heavy arms.
Black was a very strong man at any time, and inflamed as all his energies now were with the preternatural fires of maniac rage, it required the full exertion of all the huge strength for which Bill was remarkable to cope with him. We looked on with intense interest, for everybody present, like myself, was uncertain and curious as to whether Bill's indignant and abrupt course had been the result of sheer simplicity—mistaking the sense of the expression " madness,"—of a sagacious intuition of the treatment proper in such a case, or confidence in his own resources. For a moment or so the figures of the two men were tossed to and fro in the uncertain light, linked and writhing ifl a stern, silent, and desperate struggle.    It seemed to me that Bill's