"No rounds to this affairs," he called to the crowd. "Fair fightin', foul holds and punches barred. Everything else goes. Man down allowed ten seconds. That's my ruling," he added to the two men.
Mormon looked clumsy as a bear as he waited for the word. He was far stouter than Russell. His bald pate, with its reddish fringe of hair, looked grotesque under the moon. The bulge of his stomach seemed a strong handicap in agility and wind. Yet his flesh was hard and, where the tan ended on neck and forearms, it held a glisten that caused the knowing ones to nod approvingly. There was strength in his back, big muscles shifted on his shoulders and his arms were bigger than Russell's, if shorter, corded with pack of sinew and muscle. As he toed his line, swaying from side to side, arms apart, the left a little forward, he moved with a lightness strange to his usual tread. Russell crouched a little, his long arms hanging low, knees bent. The two lines were about six feet apart.
They faced each other in a silence of held breath on all sides. Pardee stood to one side, equally between them. His arm went up.
"Ready?" he asked. "Let her go!"
A great sigh went up as the two fighters leaped forward. Both seemed about to clinch, to test their prowess as wrestlers. Murmurs went up from back of Mormon where his fanciers had ranged themselves. "Russell's got too many tricks for him," men told each other and then gasped.
Mormon had landed, light as a dancing master, despite his bulk, had stooped, turned in a flash with his right hand clamped about the right wrist of Russell, bowing his back, heaving with all his might.
Russell, shifting at the last second from a clutch, seeing Mormon charging, swung a vicious uppercut. He made the mistake of underestimating Mormon, thinking him slow-witted. He found his wrist in a vise, his arm twisted, bent down across the thick ridge of the cowman's shoulder, the powerful heave of Mormon's back. His own impetus served against him. Mormon shifted grips, he cupped Russell's elbow with his right palm and crowded all his energy into one dynamic effort of pull and hoist. Russell went over his head in a Flying Mare as the crowd stood up and yelled.
Surprised off his feet, Russell's experience served him in good stead as they left the ground. Mormon's trick had scored, but it was an old one and had its counter-move. As he landed, legs flexed, he twisted, grabbed Mormon's arm with his free one and jerked him forward, hunching a shoulder under the cowman's stomach. The pair of them rolled together on the ground, struggling and clubbing, while the spectators shouted themselves hoarse and smote each other great blows. Pardee, stepping warily, watched the writhing pair.
Russell, wiser at this game, contrived leverage, twisting Mormon, and pinned his arms in a scissors grip while he battered at his face and Mormon writhed to get away from the reach of those long arms. The soft dust clouded about them and their grunts came out from it as they struggled. Once, with Mormon striving to open the leg grip, jerking away from the flailing blows, they rolled perilously near a clump of prickly pear on the verge of their little arena and a universal cry of warning went up.
The two heard nothing of it in their hammer and tongs affair, the superheated blood, stoked by passion, surging through their veins.