THE BRUTE
Between the two stalwart men who fronted one another, stripped to
trousers and shoes, there was not so much to choose. Woodhull perhaps
had the better of it by a few pounds in weight, and forsooth looked less
slouchy out of his clothes than in them. His was the long and sinewy
type of muscle. He was in hard condition.
Banion, two years younger than his rival, himself was round and slender,
thin of flank, a trace squarer and fuller of shoulder. His arms showed
easily rippling bands of muscles, his body was hard in the natural vigor
of youth and life in the open air. His eye was fixed all the time on his
man. He did not speak or turn aside, but walked on in.
There were no preliminaries, there was no delay. In a flash the Saxon
ordeal of combat was joined. The two fighters met in a rush.
At the center of the fighting space they hung, body to body, in a
whirling _melée_. Neither had much skill in real boxing, and such
fashion of fight was unknown in that region, the offensive being the
main thing and defense remaining incidental. The thud of fist on face,
the discoloration that rose under the savage blows, the blood that
oozed and scattered, proved that the fighting blood of both these mad
creatures was up, so that they felt no pain, even as they knew no fear.
In their first fly, as witnesses would have termed it, there was no
advantage to either, and both came out well marked. In the combat of the
time and place there were no rules, no periods, no resting times. Once
they were dispatched to it, the fight was the affair of the fighters,
with no more than a very limited number of restrictions as to fouls.
They met and broke, bloody, gasping, once, twice, a dozen times. Banion
was fighting slowly, carefully.
"I'll make it free, if you dare!" panted Woodhull at length.
They broke apart once more by mutual need of breath. He meant he would
bar nothing; he would go back to the days of Boone and Kenton and Girty,
when hair, eye, any part of the body was fair aim.
"You can't dare me!" rejoined Will Banion. "It's as my seconds say."
Young Jed Wingate, suddenly pale, stood by and raised no protest.
Kelsey's face was stony calm. The small eye of Hall narrowed, but he too
held to the etiquette of non-interference in this matter of man and man,
though what had passed here was a deadly thing. Mutilation, death might
now ensue, and not mere defeat. But they all waited for the other side.
"Air ye game to hit, Will?" demanded Jackson at length.
"I don't fear him, anyway he comes," replied Will Banion. "I don't like
it, but all of this was forced on me."
"The hell it was!" exclaimed Kelsey. "I heard ye call my man a liar."
"An' he called my man a coward!" cut in Jackson.
"He is a coward," sneered Woodhull, panting, "or he'd not flicker now.
He's afraid I'll take his eye out, damn him!"
Will Banion turned to his friends.
"Are we gentlemen at all?" said he. "Shall we go back a hundred years?"
"If your man's afraid, we claim the fight!" exclaimed Kelsey. "Breast
yore bird!"
"So be it then!" said Will Banion. "Don't mind me, Jackson! I don't fear
him and I think I can beat him. It's free! I bar nothing, nor can he!
Get back!"
Woodhull rushed first in the next assault, confident of his skill in
rough-and-tumble. He felt at his throat the horizontal arm of his enemy.
He caught away the wrist in his own hand, but sustained a heavy blow at
the side of his head. The defense of his adversary angered him to blind
rage. He forgot everything but contact, rushed, closed and caught his
antagonist in the brawny grip of his arms. The battle at once resolved
itself into the wrestling and battering match of the frontier. And it
was free! Each might kill or maim if so he could.
The wrestling grips of the frontiersmen were few and primitive,
efficient when applied by masters; and no schoolboy but studied all the
holds as matter of religion, in a time when physical prowess was the
most admirable quality a man might have.
Each fighter tried the forward jerk and trip which sometimes would do
with an opponent not much skilled; but this primer work got results for
neither. Banion evaded and swung into a hip lock, so swift that Woodhull
left the ground. But his instinct gave him hold with one hand at his
enemy's collar. He spread wide his feet and cast his weight aside, so
that he came standing, after all. He well knew that a man must keep his
feet. Woe to him who fell when it all was free! His own riposte was a
snakelike glide close into his antagonist's arms, a swift thrust of his
leg between the other's--the grapevine, which sometimes served if done
swiftly.
It was done swiftly, but it did not serve. The other spread his legs,
leaned against him, and in a flash came back in the dreaded crotch lock
of the frontier, which some men boasted no one could escape at their
hands. Woodhull was flung fair, but he broke wide and rose and rushed
back and joined again, grappling; so that they stood once more body to
body, panting, red, savage as any animals that fight, and more cruel.
The seconds all were on their feet, scarce breathing.
They pushed in sheer test, and each found the other's stark strength.
Yet Banion's breath still came even, his eye betokened no anxiety of the
issue. Both were bloody now, clothing and all. Then in a flash the
scales turned against the challenger _a l'outrance_.
Banion caught his antagonist by the wrist, and swift as a flash stooped,
turning his own back and drawing the arm of his enemy over his own
shoulder, slightly turned, so that the elbow joint was in peril and so
that the pain must be intense. It was one of the jiu jitsu holds,
discovered independently perhaps at that instant; certainly a new hold
for the wrestling school of the frontier.
Woodhull's seconds saw the look of pain come on his face, saw him wince,
saw him writhe, saw him rise on his toes. Then, with a sudden squatting
heave, Banion cast him full length in front of him, upon his back!
Before he had time to move he was upon him, pinning him down. A growl
came from six observers.
In an ordinary fall a man might have turned, might have escaped. But
Woodhull had planned his own undoing when he had called it free. Eyeless
men, usually old men, in this day brought up talk of the ancient and
horrible warfare of a past generation, when destruction of the adversary
was the one purpose and any means called fair when it was free.
But the seconds of both men raised no hand when they saw the balls of
Will Banion's thumbs pressed against the upper orbit edge of his enemy's
eyes.
"Do you say enough?" panted the victor.
A groan from the helpless man beneath.
"Am I the best man? Can I whip you?" demanded the voice above him, in
the formula prescribed.
"Go on--do it! Pull out his eye!" commanded Bill Jackson savagely. "He
called it free to you! But don't wait!"
But the victor sprang free, stood, dashed the blood from his own eyes,
wavered on his feet.
The hands of his fallen foe were across his eyes. But even as his men
ran in, stooped and drew them away the conqueror exclaimed:
"I'll not! I tell you I won't maim you, free or no free! Get up!"
So Woodhull knew his eyes were spared, whatever might be the pain of the
sore nerves along the socket bone.
He rose to his knees, to his feet, his face ghastly in his own sudden
sense of defeat, the worse for his victor's magnanimity, if such it
might be called. Humiliation was worse than pain. He staggered, sobbing.
"I won't take nothing for a gift from you!"
But now the men stood between them, like and like. Young Jed Wingate
pushed back his man.
"It's done!" said he. "You shan't fight no more with the man that let
you up. You're whipped, and by your own word it'd have been worse!"
He himself handed Will Banion his coat.
"Go get a pail of water," he said to Kelsey, and the latter departed.
Banion stepped apart, battered and pale beneath his own wounds.
"I didn't want to fight him this way," said he. "I left him his eyes so
he can see me again. If so he wants, I'll meet him any way. I hope he
won't rue back."
"You fool!" said old Bill Jackson, drawing Banion to one side. "Do ye
know what ye're a-sayin'? Whiles he was a-layin' thar I seen the bottoms
o' his boots. Right fancy they was, with smallish heels! That skunk'll
kill ye in the dark, Will. Ye'd orto hev put out'n both his two eyes!"
A sudden sound made them all turn. Came crackling of down brush, the
scream of a woman's voice. At the side of the great tree stood a figure
that had no right there. They turned mute.
It was Molly Wingate who faced them all now, turning from one bloody,
naked figure to the other. She saw Sam Woodhull standing, his hands
still at his face; caught some sense out of Jackson's words, overheard
as she came into the clearing.
"You!" she blazed at Will Banion. "You'd put out a man's eyes! You
brute!"