s echoed.

Man-to-man fashion! As if man could invent an unfairer scheme to settle
private quarrels! Give a man heavy muscles and huge knuckles, tough
hide and thick skull, add half the courage of a yellow dog, and how can
he lose at that game? The old-time duellists with their swords were a
hundred times fairer. A long sword to his wrist and the smallest man had
a chance; which is as it should be, or else we might as well pick some
seven-foot, solid-skulled savage from out of the jungle and set him up
for king.

Man to man! Drislane was five foot six and weighed, possibly, a hundred
and thirty-five pounds, and was no boxer. Sickles was six foot three and
weighed two-fifty. He had enormous muscles and knuckles of brass. His
hide was thick and hard as double-ought canvas. Drislane could have
stood off and pounded on his ribs for a week and hardly black-and-blued
them. He could have swung on him for a month and not knocked him over.

It was the old-fashioned style of stand-up fighting. No regular rounds
with a rest between. The men rushed and slugged and clinched and tugged,
and when they fell, got up and went at it again. Always, when they went
to the floor, Sickles let his two hundred and fifty pounds drop limp and
heavy on Drislane. Drislane would almost flatten out under it. Standing
up, when Sickles's fist landed on him he would wince all over. He felt
pain like a girl.

It was slaughter. Blood, blood, blood; and the blood all on one side.
For perhaps twenty times Drislane was knocked flat. If Sickles had only
the explosive spark to go with those tremendous blows he wouldn't have
had to hit Drislane more than once. But he could only continue to knock
the little man flat; and knocking him flat often enough, the pounding
finally told.

The time came when Drislane could not rise to his feet. He worked
himself up to one knee, with the big man waiting for him to look up so
he might deliver the blow more sweetly. Drislane, knowing to the full
what was coming, looked up and took all there was of it.

This time he lay flat and quiet. The triumphant Sickles bent over him.
"Y'are satisfied, are yuh?"

Sickles wasn't going to stop with beating him up. Drislane must proclaim
his conqueror's victory and his own defeat. Possibly he wanted the girl
Rose to hear it. She had been standing back on a box in the kitchen
doorway and must have seen most of the fight. I was wondering how far
the joy of battle would mount in her pri