Again and again each secured a throat-hold but lost it. Over they rolled, kicking whenever a foot came free, slugging with either fist or both, striving to dash each other’s head against stone or root, heaving and wrenching until they had tumbled out of the brush and into the trail where they had first stood. In Douglas grew amazement at the strength and endurance of his antagonist. In Snake’s brain gnawed a keener fear of the man on whom he had exhausted in vain every foul trick he knew. Neither could quite overcome the other. Both were gasping and growing dizzy from the violence of their combat. And they fought on.
Suddenly, in a final squirming spasm, Snake twisted himself free. Before Douglas could clutch him again he had rolled away and was shoving himself up. The blond man got his feet under him and pitched to a stand. Then, too short of breath to renew the duel at once, they balanced themselves and glowered.
Snake was a hard sight, and Douglas was not much better. The hillman’s face was gashed by cuts and smeared with mingled blood and tobacco-juice, his right eye was shut, his mouth was a blubbery pulp, his clothes hung in rags. The other’s bloodshot eyes gleamed between puffy lids, his nose leaked a red drizzle, his light hair was stained from a cut scalp and full of dirt, his shirt was ripped to the waist and crimsoned at the shoulder where Snake’s teeth had sunk. But neither saw anything except the menace in the other’s eyes.
The same thought came to both—probably born in the vindictive brain of Snake and involuntarily transmitted by his look: the thought of the gun leaning against the pack. True, it was “newfangled,” and Douglas knew it was locked against discharge; but in a fight a gun is not only a gun but a steel bar and a club. It was behind its owner, and a swift dash past him might make Snake its master. He attempted the dash.
Without the slightest preliminary movement he was speeding past Douglas. But the latter was not asleep. Pivoting on a heel, he swung a round-arm blow flush under the passing jaw.
The shock was terrific. Between the impetus of Snake’s plunge and the body-drive of the punch, the impact was more than doubled. The slugging arm dropped, numb to the shoulder. Snake also dropped—numb all over.
His feet left the ground, and he straightened backward in the air. Flat on his back he struck, arms at his sides, legs stretched nerveless, head a little to the right, blank face turned to the brush. There he lay without a quiver of life.
Douglas stood peering down, slowly swinging his numbed arm at his side. Minutes passed. His breathing grew normal; his arm lost its wooden feeling. Somewhere a bird chirped noisily. Up from the unseen chasm of the Traps idled a new breeze, bearing the music of the far-off hammers. The warm sun beat down on the two men. Still Snake Sanders lay motionless.
The swollen-eyed man above him trod tentatively on a grimy hand. It gave no answering twitch. He stooped, studied the face, put a thumb on the left lid, pushed it up, and peered at the eyeball. Then he stood up, unconsciously rubbing his thumb against his shirt.
“Well, Mister Snake Sanders,” he said grimly, “if I were you and you were I, you’d drag me over to the edge and pitch me off to smash on the rocks, most likely. That’s what I ought to do to you. But I don’t happen to be built along those lines. Just what can a white man do with a reptile like you under such circumstances?”