Seymour's lips were as white as the freshly drifted snow outside and his voice as cold as the temperature when he asked what the factor meant to insinuate.
"Perhaps the kindest interpretation for you," Karmack began with gloating insolence, "is that those fox pelts are buying an easy winter for Oliver O'Malley's slayer with an ultimate get-away in the spring. In other words, Seymour, you're a disgrace to the uniform you wear—the first I've ever met with. You're a low-down, grafting bribe-taker and to show you how I respect——"
Instead of finishing his tirade, the factor flashed out with his right in a vicious upper-cut. Seymour sensed rather than saw it coming. Having developed a cat-like quickness, he might have dodged and let the blow slide past; but preferred to take it on his jaw of iron. He needed, he felt, the sting of it to release for the deserved punishment of his detractor all the latent powers within his rangy frame.
At once, the hard-knuckled mill was on—a furious battle of males, for this session, primitive males. Science, if either of them knew aught but the rough and tumble tactics of the outlands, was forgot. Blows were exchanged with a rapidity that must have been beyond the scoring of ring-side experts had there been any present. In the States, thousands pay their tens of dollars to see fights that were so little like this one as to seem primrose teas. There was nothing gentle about it. Not until Karmack sprawled his length on the rough board floor was there the slightest breathing space, unless you'd call breathing the insucked breaths between clinched teeth that sounded more like exhausts from wheezy locomotives.
Seymour stepped back to give the factor time and space to rise if fight still was left in him. Great as was his provocation, he insisted on fighting fair. That there are no rules for rough-and-tumble made no difference to him. He couldn't hit a man who was down.
Karmack came up with a surprising show of strength, his eyes gleaming dangerously. One of these the sergeant closed with a body-wrecking jolt. In turn, he was knocked heavily against the counter. The sharp edge of this caught him across the small of the back, a terrific kidney blow. The surge of pain seemed to open the hinges of his knees.
At that vital moment, when he must have been hard put to keep his feet in any event, the factor fouled him with a vicious kick on the shin. It was inevitable that Seymour go down. In falling, though, he managed to lunge his body forward, gaining a clutching grip on his opponent's torso, and carrying him along.
There on the floor they rolled over and over like a couple of polar bears in deadly combat. First one and then the other was on top and in position to jab. Claret splotches marked their irregular course. Fingers tangled and untangled, now in the factor's black mop, then in the sergeant's brown one. The latter's uniform was tattered; the factor's tweeds were shredded. Punishment, however, was well distributed and the battle, so far, a draw.
But this winter, Karmack had held close to his store and spent long hours with his pipe; Seymour had roamed the open and seared his lungs with the vital air of the North. In the end, this difference which leather-pushers know as "wind condition" told its tale. The factor was rasping when the Mountie was still breathing with comparative ease. Longer and longer on each turn was the policeman holding the uppermost position.
Suddenly Karmack, underneath, ceased violent struggles. It seemed he had weakened.