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“Oh, I know what kind of a thing this is!I know you’ll all pitch on me. I can’t lick you all!”

Scully turned upon him panther-fashion.”You’ll not have to whip all of us. You’ll have to whip my son Johnnie. An’ the man what troubles you durin’ that time will have me to dale with.”

The arrangements were swiftly made. The two men faced each other, obedient to the harsh commands of Scully, whose face, in the subtly luminous gloom, could be seen set in the austere impersonal lines that are pictured on the countenances of the Roman veterans. The Easterner’s teeth were chattering, and he was hopping up and down like a mechanical toy. The cowboy stood rock-like.

The contestants had not stripped off any clothing. Each was in his ordinary attire. Their fists were up, and they eyed each other in a calm that had the elements of leonine cruelty in it.

During this pause, the Easterner’s mind, like a film, took lasting impressions of three men — the iron-nerved master of the ceremony; the Swede, pale, motionless, terrible; and Johnnie, serene yet ferocious, brutish yet heroic. The entire prelude had in it a tragedy greater than the tragedy of action, and this aspect was accentuated by the long mellow cry of the blizzard, as it sped the tumbling and wailing flakes into the black abyss of the south.

“Now!” said Scully.

The two combatants leaped forward and crashed together like bullocks. There was heard the cushioned sound of blows, and of a curse squeezing out from between the tight teeth of one.

As for the spectators, the Easterner’s pent-up breath exploded from him with a pop of relief, absolute relief from the tension of the preliminaries. The cowboy bounded into the air with a yowl. Scully was immovable as from supreme amazement and fear at the fury of the fight which he himself had permitted and arranged.

For a time the encounter in the darkness was such a perplexity of flying arms that it presented no more detail than would a swiftly-revolving wheel. Occasionally a face, as if illumined by a flash of light, would shine out, ghastly and marked with pink spots. A moment later, the men might have been known as shadows, if it were not for the involuntary utterance of oaths that came from them in whispers.

Suddenly a holocaust of warlike desire caught the cowboy, and he bolted forward with the speed of a broncho.”Go it, Johnnie; go it!Kill him!Kill him!”

Scully confronted him.”Kape back,” he said; and by his glance the cowboy could tell that this man was Johnnie’s father.

To the Easterner there was a monotony of unchangeable fighting that was an abomination. This confused mingling was eternal to his sense, which was concentrated in a longing for the end, the priceless end. Once the fighters lurched near him, and as he scrambled hastily backward, he heard them breathe like men on the rack.

“Kill him, Johnnie!Kill him!Kill him!Kill him!”The cowboy’s face was contorted like one of those agony masks in museums.

“Keep still,” said Scully icily.

Then there was a sudden loud grunt, incomplete, cut short, and Johnnie’s body swung away from the Swede and fell with sickening heaviness to the grass. The cowboy was barely in time to prevent the mad Swede from flinging himself upon his prone adversary.”No, you don’t,” said the cowboy, interposing an arm.”Wait a second.”

Scully was at his son’s side.”Johnnie!Johnnie, me boy?”His voice had a quality of melancholy tenderness.”Johnnie?Can you go on with it?”He looked anxiously down into the bloody pulpy face of his son.

There was a moment of silence, and then Johnnie answered in his ordinary voice: “Yes, I — it — yes.”

Assisted by his father he struggled to his feet.”Wait a bit now till you git your wind,” said the old man.

A few paces away the cowboy was lecturing the Swede.”No, you don’t!Wait a second!”

The Easterner was plucking at Scully’s sleeve.”Oh, this is enough,” he pleaded.”This is enough!Let it go as it stands. This is enough!”