CHAPTER IX

THE BRUTE

Between the two stalwart men who fronted one another, stripped to trousers and shoes, there was not so much to choose.  Woodhull perhaps had the better of it by a few pounds in weight, and forsooth looked less slouchy out of his clothes than in them.  His was the long and sinewy type of muscle.  He was in hard condition.

Banion, two years younger than his rival, himself was round and slender, thin of flank, a trace squarer and fuller of shoulder.  His arms showed easily rippling bands of muscles, his body was hard in the natural vigor of youth and life in the open air.  His eye was fixed all the time on his man.  He did not speak or turn aside, but walked on in.

There were no preliminaries, there was no delay.  In a flash the Saxon ordeal of combat was joined.  The two fighters met in a rush.

At the center of the fighting space they hung, body to body, in a whirling melee.  Neither had much skill in real boxing, and such fashion of fight was unknown in that region, the offensive being the main thing and defense remaining incidental.  The thud of fist on face, the discoloration that rose under the savage blows, the blood that oozed and scattered, proved that the fighting blood of both these mad creatures was up, so that they felt no pain, even as they knew no fear.

In their first fly, as witnesses would have termed it, there was no advantage to either, and both came out well marked.  In the combat of the time and place there were no rules, no periods, no resting times.  Once they were dispatched to it, the fight was the affair of the fighters, with no more than a very limited number of restrictions as to fouls.

They met and broke, bloody, gasping, once, twice, a dozen times.  Banion was fighting slowly, carefully.

“I’ll make it free, if you dare!” panted Woodhull at length.

They broke apart once more by mutual need of breath.  He meant he would bar nothing; he would go back to the days of Boone and Kenton and Girty, when hair, eye, any part of the body was fair aim.

“You can’t dare me!” rejoined Will Banion.  “It’s as my seconds say.”

Young Jed Wingate, suddenly pale, stood by and raised no protest.  Kelsey’s face was stony calm.  The small eye of Hall narrowed, but he too held to the etiquette of non-interference in this matter of man and man, though what had passed here was a deadly thing.  Mutilation, death might now ensue, and not mere defeat.  But they all waited for the other side.

“Air ye game to hit, Will?” demanded Jackson at length.

“I don’t fear him, anyway he comes,” replied Will Banion.  “I don’t like it, but all of this was forced on me.”

“The hell it was!” exclaimed Kelsey.  “I heard ye call my man a liar.”

“An’ he called my man a coward!” cut in Jackson.

“He is a coward,” sneered Woodhull, panting, “or he’d not flicker now.  He’s afraid I’ll take his eye out, damn him!”