Will Banion turned to his friends.

“Are we gentlemen at all?” said he.  “Shall we go back a hundred years?”

“If your man’s afraid, we claim the fight!” exclaimed Kelsey.  “Breast yore bird!”

“So be it then!” said Will Banion.  “Don’t mind me, Jackson!  I don’t fear him and I think I can beat him.  It’s free!  I bar nothing, nor can he!  Get back!”

Woodhull rushed first in the next assault, confident of his skill in rough-and-tumble.  He felt at his throat the horizontal arm of his enemy.  He caught away the wrist in his own hand, but sustained a heavy blow at the side of his head.  The defense of his adversary angered him to blind rage.  He forgot everything but contact, rushed, closed and caught his antagonist in the brawny grip of his arms.  The battle at once resolved itself into the wrestling and battering match of the frontier.  And it was free!  Each might kill or maim if so he could.

The wrestling grips of the frontiersmen were few and primitive, efficient when applied by masters; and no schoolboy but studied all the holds as matter of religion, in a time when physical prowess was the most admirable quality a man might have.

Each fighter tried the forward jerk and trip which sometimes would do with an opponent not much skilled; but this primer work got results for neither.  Banion evaded and swung into a hip lock, so swift that Woodhull left the ground.  But his instinct gave him hold with one hand at his enemy’s collar.  He spread wide his feet and cast his weight aside, so that he came standing, after all.  He well knew that a man must keep his feet.  Woe to him who fell when it all was free!  His own riposte was a snakelike glide close into his antagonist’s arms, a swift thrust of his leg between the other’s—­the grapevine, which sometimes served if done swiftly.

It was done swiftly, but it did not serve.  The other spread his legs, leaned against him, and in a flash came back in the dreaded crotch lock of the frontier, which some men boasted no one could escape at their hands.  Woodhull was flung fair, but he broke wide and rose and rushed back and joined again, grappling; so that they stood once more body to body, panting, red, savage as any animals that fight, and more cruel.  The seconds all were on their feet, scarce breathing.

They pushed in sheer test, and each found the other’s stark strength.  Yet Banion’s breath still came even, his eye betokened no anxiety of the issue.  Both were bloody now, clothing and all.  Then in a flash the scales turned against the challenger a l’outrance.

Banion caught his antagonist by the wrist, and swift as a flash stooped, turning his own back and drawing the arm of his enemy over his own shoulder, slightly turned, so that the elbow joint was in peril and so that the pain must be intense.  It was one of the jiu jitsu holds, discovered independently perhaps at that instant; certainly a new hold for the wrestling school of the frontier.