Perhaps Hauck heard.  David wondered as he caught the glitter in his eyes when he drew the Girl away.  He heard the crash of the big gate to the cage, and Tara, ambled out and took his way slowly and limpingly toward the edge of the forest.  When he saw the Girl again, he was standing in the centre of the cage, his feet in a pool of blood that smeared the ground.  She was struggling with Hauck, struggling to break from him and get to the house.  And now he knew that Hauck had heard, and that he would hold her there, and that her eyes would be on him while Brokaw was killing him.  For he knew that Brokaw would fight to kill.  It would not be a square fight.  It would be murder—­if the chance came Brokaw’s way.  The thought did not frighten him.  He was growing strangely calm in these moments.  He realized the advantage of being unencumbered, and he stripped off his shirt, and tightened his belt.  And then Brokaw entered.  The giant had stripped himself to the waist, and he stood for a moment looking at David, a monster with the lust of murder in his eyes.  It was frightfully unequal—­this combat.  David felt it, he was blind if he did not see it, and yet he was still unafraid.  A great silence fell.  Cutting it like a knife came the Girl’s voice: 

“Sakewawin—­Sakewawin....”

A brutish growl rose out of Brokaw’s chest.  He had heard that cry, and it stung him like an asp.

“To-night, she will be with me,” he taunted David and lowered his head for battle.

CHAPTER XXIV

David no longer saw the horde of faces beyond the thick bars of the cage.  His last glance, shot past the lowered head and hulking shoulders of his giant adversary, went to the Girl.  He noticed that she had ceased her struggling and was looking toward him.  After that his eyes never left Brokaw’s face.  Until now it had not seemed that Brokaw was so big and so powerful, and, sizing up his enemy in that moment before the first rush, he realized that his one hope was to keep him from using his enormous strength at close quarters.  A clinch would be fatal.  In Brokaw’s arms he would be helpless; he was conscious of an unpleasant thrill as he thought how easy it would be for the other to break his back, or snap his neck, if he gave him the opportunity.  Science!  What would it avail him here, pitted against this mountain of flesh and bone that looked as though it might stand the beating of clubs without being conquered!  His first blow returned his confidence, even if it had wavered slightly.  Brokaw rushed.  It was an easy attack to evade, and David’s arm shot out and his fist landed against Brokaw’s head with a sound that was like the crack of a whip.  Hauck would have gone down under that blow like a log.  Brokaw staggered.  Even he realized that this was science—­the skill of the game—­and he was grinning as he advanced again.  He could stand a hundred blows like that—­a grim and ferocious Achilles