Woodhull’s seconds saw the look of pain come on his face, saw him wince, saw him writhe, saw him rise on his toes.  Then, with a sudden squatting heave, Banion cast him full length in front of him, upon his back!  Before he had time to move he was upon him, pinning him down.  A growl came from six observers.

In an ordinary fall a man might have turned, might have escaped.  But Woodhull had planned his own undoing when he had called it free.  Eyeless men, usually old men, in this day brought up talk of the ancient and horrible warfare of a past generation, when destruction of the adversary was the one purpose and any means called fair when it was free.

But the seconds of both men raised no hand when they saw the balls of Will Banion’s thumbs pressed against the upper orbit edge of his enemy’s eyes.

“Do you say enough?” panted the victor.

A groan from the helpless man beneath.

“Am I the best man?  Can I whip you?” demanded the voice above him, in the formula prescribed.

“Go on—­do it!  Pull out his eye!” commanded Bill Jackson savagely.  “He called it free to you!  But don’t wait!”

But the victor sprang free, stood, dashed the blood from his own eyes, wavered on his feet.

The hands of his fallen foe were across his eyes.  But even as his men ran in, stooped and drew them away the conqueror exclaimed: 

“I’ll not!  I tell you I won’t maim you, free or no free!  Get up!”

So Woodhull knew his eyes were spared, whatever might be the pain of the sore nerves along the socket bone.

He rose to his knees, to his feet, his face ghastly in his own sudden sense of defeat, the worse for his victor’s magnanimity, if such it might be called.  Humiliation was worse than pain.  He staggered, sobbing.

“I won’t take nothing for a gift from you!”

But now the men stood between them, like and like.  Young Jed Wingate pushed back his man.

“It’s done!” said he.  “You shan’t fight no more with the man that let you up.  You’re whipped, and by your own word it’d have been worse!”

He himself handed Will Banion his coat.

“Go get a pail of water,” he said to Kelsey, and the latter departed.

Banion stepped apart, battered and pale beneath his own wounds.

“I didn’t want to fight him this way,” said he.  “I left him his eyes so he can see me again.  If so he wants, I’ll meet him any way.  I hope he won’t rue back.”

“You fool!” said old Bill Jackson, drawing Banion to one side.  “Do ye know what ye’re a-sayin’?  Whiles he was a-layin’ thar I seen the bottoms o’ his boots.  Right fancy they was, with smallish heels!  That skunk’ll kill ye in the dark, Will.  Ye’d orto hev put out’n both his two eyes!”

A sudden sound made them all turn.  Came crackling of down brush, the scream of a woman’s voice.  At the side of the great tree stood a figure that had no right there.  They turned mute.