In their first fly, as witnesses would have termed it, there was no advantage to either, and both came out well marked. In the combat of the time and place there were no rules, no periods, no resting times. Once they were dispatched to it, the fight was the affair of the fighters, with no more than a very limited number of restrictions as to fouls.
They met and broke, bloody, gasping, once, twice, a dozen times. Banion was fighting slowly, carefully.
"I'll make it free, if you dare!" panted Woodhull at length.
They broke apart once more by mutual need of breath. He meant he would bar nothing; he would go back to the days of Boone and Kenton and Girty, when hair, eye, any part of the body was fair aim.
"You can't dare me!" rejoined Will Banion. "It's as my seconds say."
Young Jed Wingate, suddenly pale, stood by and raised no protest. Kelsey's face was stony calm. The small eye of Hall narrowed, but he too held to the etiquette of non-interference in this matter of man and man, though what had passed here was a deadly thing. Mutilation, death might now ensue, and not mere defeat. But they all waited for the other side.
"Air ye game to hit, Will?" demanded Jackson at length.
[pg 70]
"I don't fear him, anyway he comes," replied Will Banion. "I don't like it, but all of this was forced on me."