Snake’s lean frame wriggled forward again and started up. But he was not quite free. Without waiting to rise, Douglas darted a hand backward and clamped it around one bare ankle. Holding his grip, he rolled over, twisting and yanking the trapped leg.
The hillman tottered and lost his footing. But even before he hit the ground for the second time he lashed out in air with his free foot. His heel thumped into the blond man’s face, snapping his head back like a fist-blow. Hissing furiously, Snake jerked up his leg and let drive again. The fierce foot-punch missed this time, for its mark had ducked aside and the leg shot over Douglas’ shoulder. Promptly it was seized, held, forced down.
Both men now were in a grotesque posture for fighting. Snake’s legs were spread, with his antagonist sitting between them and clutching a foot on each side, while Snake himself sat on one booted ankle, pinning it down. But the advantage was decidedly with Sanders, for both his hands were free. He shot them straight for the other’s throat.
His arms were struck up and his savage clutch failed. His feet were freed, but the hands which had gripped them now were fists, shooting short-arm jolts into his jaw. And, short though those blows were, they crunched his teeth together with a force that made him blink groggily and throw himself aside.
An instant later he found himself grappled. Douglas was clinching him, shoving him down, striving for a leg-hold with his knees and relentlessly forcing one of his arms up behind his back. Douglas’ eyes were ablaze with wrath and his jaw set like a rock. Now he had this treacherous reptile in a real grip, and he meant to smash it. And Snake, reading the grim purpose in the face of the man against whose back he had loosed creeping death, felt fear stab through him.
Heretofore the sinister hillman had fought only in a flurry of surprise and rage—though he would not have neglected to make his work complete if once he got the upper hand. Now the fury of desperation fired him. He snaked himself over sidewise, wriggled a leg loose, twined it around the booted leg beside it, and, by a curling twist, eased the strain on his pinioned arm. His yellow fangs fixed themselves in his enemy’s shoulder. His free hand clawed for the blue eyes.
Douglas released his arm-hold, evaded the gouging nails by a backward jerk of the head, got both hands to his foe’s throat, tore him loose. Both scrambled to their knees and up on their feet. Both struck with savage fists at the same instant. Both blows landed.
Squarely between the eyes Snake’s knotty fist cracked. Douglas saw a red flash, followed by floating rings of flame. His own knuckles tingled from their impact with a bristly chin. Vaguely he saw the face beyond the wavering fire-spots fade backward. His other fist, swinging for it, hit nothing.
For an instant he dug his knuckles into his eyes, trying to clear his sight. Then he squinted around. Snake was down again, clawing at the ground, trying to rise. He jumped for him—stubbed a toe against an unnoticed rock—stumbled and sprawled.
As he pushed himself up, raging, Snake got to his haunches and lurched at him in a clinch. Douglas threw himself into the wiry arms and grappled for a hold of his own. And then for a few minutes it was a straining, kicking, punching rough-and-tumble, each fighting with all he had.