Then with a chuckle of satisfaction and mockery he again went to the table seizing its edge in his hands and shoving it against her so that she was forced to retreat from its advance.
She divined instantly that he intended to force her against one of the walls and thus corner her, and she opposed her strength to his, pushing with all her power against the table in an effort to retard its advance.
It was to no purpose, for he was a strong man and his passions were aroused, and in spite of her brave struggle the table continued to move and she to retreat before it.
"Oh!" she said, in a panic of fear and dread, her face flushed, her eyes wide and bright, her breath coming in great panting sobs; "Oh! you beast! You beast!" He did not answer.

His eyes were burning with a wanton fire, they glowed with the fierce, fell purpose of animal desire; he breathed shrilly, rapidly, gaspingly, though the strength that he had been compelled to use to overmatch hers had not been great.
She did not succeed in retarding the advance of the table, but she did succeed in directing its course a little, so that instead of backing her against the wall, as he no doubt intended to do, she brought up finally against the stove in the corner.
There was a fire in the stove--she had kept it going to keep Calumet's supper warm--and when she felt her body against it she reached around and secured a flat iron.

The handle burned her hand, but she lifted it and hurled it with all her force at his head.

He dodged, laughing derisively.

She seized another and threw it, and this he dodged also.
She was reaching for the teakettle when he shoved the table aside and lunged at her, and she dropped the kettle with a scream of horror and slipped around the stove to the wall near the sitting-room door, reaching the latter and trying frantically to unbar it.
She heard Bob's voice on the other side of the door; he was calling, "Betty! Betty!" in shrill, scared accents, and when Taggart leaped at her, seizing her by the shoulders as she worked with the fastenings of the door, she screamed to Bob to get the rifle from Malcolm's room, directing him to go out the front way, go around to the kitchen and shoot Taggart through one of the windows.
How long she struggled with Taggart there by the door she did not know.
It might have been an hour or merely a minute.