He knew that Jean was like live wire and steel, as agile as a cat, more than a match with himself in open fight despite his own superior weight and size.

He devised a dozen schemes for Jean's undoing.

One was to leap on him while he was eating; another to spring on him and choke him into partial insensibility as he knelt beside his pack or fed the fire; a third to strike a blow from behind that would render him powerless.

But there was something in this last that was repugnant to him.

He remembered that Jean had saved his life, that in no instance had he given him physical pain.