Sevier ducked back his head and struck upward, a short-arm jolt, the heel of his palm catching the bully under the nose and eliciting a howl of pain. Fighting to spare the girl, Sevier manœuvred his antagonist back a dozen feet. Then he flashed a smile of relief into Hester’s distorted face and the bully’s moral fibre began to weaken. The fact that Chucky Jack had accomplished his first objective was an earnest of a second victory. Hester redoubled his ferocious efforts.
Sevier played back right willingly, his slim form giving and resisting with the supple strength of a steel spring. Hester’s eyes grew a bit worried. In Jonesboro he had often told his cronies that Chucky Jack was allowed to have his own way because of his prowess as a rifleman, and that in a man-to-man contest he would soon lose his fighting reputation. In drunken confidences at the tavern he had also gone on record as asking nothing better than to be turned loose in a fight with Sevier, each man armed only with his hands.
Now that these ideal conditions were afforded him he discovered he was not making any headway. Repeatedly he essayed his coup de maitre, a play for the eyes, and each time he failed by the edge of a second and received terrific punishment in return. His long, pointed nails scratched the borderer’s forehead and furrowed his face, but they could not extinguish the blaze in the deadly blue orbs.
He shifted his tactics and endeavoured to use his feet and knees, but instantly the borderer pressed close until there was not enough room for delivering a telling kick, or for a drive of the knee.
“Any more tricks you haven’t tried?” murmured Sevier, viciously plunging his knuckles into the front of the red throat.
Coughing and gasping, Hester faintly cried out a blasphemy and feared he was being mastered at his own game. He now knew Sevier could have blinded him a dozen times had he so desired. A terrible fear of the slim fighter began to smother his rage. Judging Chucky Jack by his own standards, he fully expected that when the borderer had wearied of playing with him he would destroy his sight and leave him to find a hideous death in the forest. For that was the death he had planned for Sevier, and he could not imagine a man foregoing the pleasure once he secured the advantage.
The two knives in Sevier’s belt hung just back of the hips to be out of the way while riding. They were long, terrible weapons. Hester believed Sevier could have used these at the beginning of the fray and had refrained for the greater joy of blinding his foe. He could not know that Sevier had fought with his hands in order to take a prisoner, and that once the borderer was committed to this style of battle he had all he could do to protect his eyesight and dared not leave his face unprotected while he fished for a knife.
And Sevier smiled as he blocked each attempt, but he was more keenly concerned than Hester imagined. Suddenly the bully butted his head and at the same time wrenched a hand free and plunged it to the borderer’s belt. Sevier bowed his head and received the blow on his forehead, the two skulls crashing together with sickening force. For a second the borderer’s head swam; in the next he had struck Hester’s hand to one side, but not before the bully’s long fingers had gripped a knife.
“Now!” yelled Hester, stabbing joyously.
“And now!” replied Sevier, avoiding the thrust and pulling the second knife. “I like this much better.”