ace.

He would have finished Braman. He did not know that the man who had
greeted him as "ol' 'Brand'" had smashed the banker in the forehead with
the butt of a pistol when the banker had tried to bar his progress at the
doorway; he was not aware that the force of the blow had hurled Braman
against him, and that the latter, half unconscious, was not defending
himself. He would not have cared had he known these things, for he was
fighting blindly, doggedly, recklessly--fighting two men, he thought. And
though he sensed that there could be but one end to such a struggle, he
hammered away with ferocious malignance, and in the abandon of his passion
in this extremity he was recklessly swinging his broken left arm, driving
it at Braman, groaning each time the fist landed.

He felt hands grasping him, and he fought them off, smashing weakly at
faces that appeared around him as he was dragged to his feet. He heard a
voice say: "His arm's bruk," and the voice seemed to clear the atmosphere.
He paused, holding back a blow, and the dancing blur of faces assumed a
proper aspect and he saw the man who had hit the banker.

"Hello Mullarky!" he grinned, reeling drunkenly in the arms of his
friends. "Come to see the picnic? Where's my--"

He saw Corrigan leaning against a wall of the room and lurched toward him.
A dozen hands held him back--the room was full of men; and as his brain
cleared he recognized some of them. He heard threats, mutterings, against
Corrigan, and he laughed, bidding the men to hold their peace, that it was
a "fair fight." Corrigan was unmoved by the threats--as he was unmoved by
Trevison's words. He leaned against the wall, weak, his arms hanging at
his sides, his face macerated, grinning contemptuously. And then, despite
his objections, Trevison was dragged away by Mullarky and the others,
leaving Braman stretched out on the floor, and Corrigan, his knees
sagging, his chin almost on his chest, standing near the wall. Trevison
turned as he was forced out of the door, and grinned tauntingly at his
tired enemy. Corrigan spat at him.

Half an hour later, his damaged arm bandaged, and some marks of the battle
removed, Trevison was in the banking room. He had forbidden any of his
friends to accompany him, but Mullarky and several others stood outside
the door and watched him.

A bandage around his head, Braman leaned on the counter behind the wire
netting, pale, shaking. In a chair at the desk sat Corrigan, glow