command. What did happen he expected least of all. The arm holding
the pot of steaming coffee shot out and the boiling deluge hissed
straight at Philip's face. He ducked to escape it, and fired.
Before he could throw back the hammer of the little single-action
weapon for a second shot the stranger was at him. The force of the
attack sent them both crashing back against the wall of the cabin,
and in the few moments that followed Philip blessed the
providential forethought that had made him throw off his fur coat
and strip for action. His antagonist was not an ordinary man. A
growl like that of a beast rose in his throat as they went to the
floor, and in that death-grip Philip thought of Bram.

More than once in watching the wolf-man he had planned how he
would pit himself against the giant if it came to a fight, and how
he would evade the close arm-to-arm grapple that would mean defeat
for him. And this man was Bram's equal in size and strength. He
realized with the swift judgment of the trained boxer that open
fighting and the evasion of the other's crushing brute strength
was his one hope. On his knees he flung himself backward, and
struck out. The blow caught his antagonist squarely in the face
before he had succeeded in getting a firm clinch, and as he bent
backward under the force of the blow Philip exerted every ounce of
his strength, broke the other's hold, and sprang to his feet.

He felt like uttering a shout of triumph. Never had the thrill of
mastery and of confidence surged through him more hotly than it
did now. On his feet in open fighting he had the agility of a cat.
The stranger was scarcely on his feet before he was at him with a
straight shoulder blow that landed on the giant's jaw with
crushing force. It would have put an ordinary man down in a limp