ke that."

He threw one of his clubs at my feet.

"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.

He gasped and staggered back against a tree for a second, looking dazed
as he wiped a flow of blood from his face.

"For God's sake, man," I shouted, "let us quit this."

He laughed derisively.

"The hell you say! Quit,--nothin'; not till one of us quits for keeps."

He rallied and came at me once more, but with greater wariness than
previously. He poked at me and jabbed at me. I warded him off,
keeping on the move all the time. He swung sideways on me, but I
parried easily; then, with a fierce oath, he caught his club with both
hands, raised it high in the air and b