“Not by a damn-sight!” he cried. “Here, stick them up!”
He feinted round Phil, then ran in on him. Phil had no alternative. He put up his arms, jumped aside and dealt the cattleman a stiff blow on the mouth.
The crowd gathered round and made a ring. For a time, Phil more than held his own, getting in blow after blow, while McGregor tried his best to come to grips.
“Don’t ever let him get his arms round you,” cautioned a friendly voice, the owner of which Phil had no time to note.
The stout-chested cattleman had no science, but he possessed an unlimited amount of vital energy and strength. Phil had science, but nothing else to back it up.
The ultimate issue was beyond all question and Phil knew it, for five minutes had not gone ere he was gasping for breath and had black specks floating in hundreds before his vision. He sprang aside and circled time and again, trying to avoid his antagonist’s determination to get to grips, but at last, just after a particularly close escape, someone pushed him suddenly from behind and, before he was aware of it, two great arms were round him crushing the life out of him. He struggled frantically, but felt like a puppy-dog in the paws of a grizzly. He was whirled round and round till he grew dizzy. He was crushed and hugged until he became faint. When his bones were cracking and the very life seemed oozing out of him, he felt himself suddenly catapulted somewhere in glorious release, then his senses gave way and he remembered no more for a time.
When he came to, he was lying on the bar-room floor. Someone, whose face he recollected, was bending over him, holding up his head and mopping his brow with a wet cloth. He looked into the face and remembered it. It was the long-legged man with the mop of wavy, auburn hair, whom he had noticed sitting by the window in abstraction a short time before.
“Getting better, old man?” said the young fellow good-naturedly, grinning and showing his great, strong, prominent teeth.