“Acts like it.” Donk let go of Shayne’s elbows. The detective sprawled forward limply into a matted growth of pin-edged palmettos. “Yep,” Donk said with a faint note of regret, “he’s out cold. You shouldn’t orta hit ’im so hard, Johnny.”
“He’s supposed to be tough. Wouldn’t surprise me none if he was possumin’.” Johnny kicked Shayne in the ribs. Shayne gave no sign that he felt it.
“Turn ’im over,” Johnny ordered, “and I’ll stomp him in the face good. Arch said for us to work on ’im if he tried to crash the gate tonight.”
Donk bent down and got a hold on Shayne’s shoulder to turn him over. Shayne came half erect and drove his head into Donk’s belly with the force of a battering ram.
Donk grunted and stumbled back over a clump of sharp palmettos.
Shayne whirled and lunged at Johnny, ducking a vicious downswing of the blackjack. He drove his forearm against Johnny’s Adam’s apple, which protruded at a point where his chin should have been, and the smaller man went to his knees clawing at his throat.
Shayne grabbed the blackjack from his lax fingers and whirled to meet Donk’s lunge.
The larger man parried a blow with his forearm and laughed happily. He smashed a left to Shayne’s stomach and straightened the detective up with a looping right to the chin when he jackknifed forward. Shayne swayed backward with his feet seemingly rooted in the sand, his angular face turned up to the moon and the stars.
Donk planted himself and put two hundred and forty pounds behind a piledriver right to the detective’s unprotected jaw.
Shayne’s senses swam lazily into a mist of nothingness. The moon and the stars were again blotted out.