"Fists ain't no good this trip, Mister Man. I was goin' to kill you, but I thought maybe it'd look better if we fight and let the best man win."
I stood undecided, looking first at this great mountain of infuriated humanity and then at the club he had tossed to me;—while around us were the great trees, the streams of ghostly moonlight and the looming blacknesses.
"Come on!—damn you for a yellow-gut. Take that up before I open your skull with this."
He prodded me full in the chest with the end of his weapon. I needed no second bidding. Evidently, it was he or I for it.
In fact, since the moment we first met at Golden Crescent that had been the issue with which I had always been confronted. Joe Clark or George Bremner!—one of us had to go down under the heel of the other.
I grabbed up the club and stood on guard for the terrific onslaught Joe immediately made on me.
He threw his arm in the air and came in on me like a mad buffalo. Had the blow he aimed ever fallen with all its original force, these lines never would have been written; but its strength was partly shorn by the club coming in contact with the overhanging branch of a tree.
I parried that blow, but still it beat down my guard and the club grazed my head.
I gave ground before Clark, as I tried to find an opening. I soon discovered, however, that this was not a fight where one could wait for openings. Openings had to be made, and made quickly. I threw caution to the winds. I drew myself together and rushed at him as he had rushed at me. His blow slanted off my left shoulder, numbing my arm to the finger-tips. Mine got home on a more vital place: it caught him sheer on the top of the head.
I thought, for sure, I had smashed his skull. But no such luck; Joe Clark's bones were too stoutly made and knit.