But he was game. "Not on your life," he shouted back. "We ain't started yet. Try your damnedest."
He tossed aside the remainder of his club and jumped at me with his great hands groping. I stepped back and threw my stick deliberately far into the forest, then I stopped and met him with his own weapons. After all, I was now on a more equal footing with him than I had been when both of us were armed.
We clinched, and locked together. We turned, and twisted, and struggled. He had the advantage over me in weight and sheer brute strength, but I had him shaded when it came to knowing how to use the strength I possessed.
We smashed at each other with our fists wherever and whenever we found an opening. Our clothes were soon in ribbons. Blood spurted from us as it would from stuck pigs.
Gasping for breath with roaring sounds,—choking,—half-blind, we staggered and swayed, smashing into trees and over bushes.
At last I missed my footing and stumbled over a protruding log, falling backward. Still riveted together,—Joe Clark came with me. The back of my head struck, with a sickening crash, into a tree and I knew no more.
When consciousness came back to me, I groaned for a return of the blessed sleep from which I had awakened, for every inch of my poor body was a racking agony.
A thousand noises drummed, and thumped, and roared in my head and the weight of the entire universe seemed to be lying across my chest.
I struggled weakly to free myself, and, as I recollected gradually what had happened to me, I put out my hands. They came in contact with something cold and clammy.
It was the bloody face of Joe Clark, who was lying on top of me.