With a black madness inside me, I sprang in on him. He stepped aside.

"No, you don't!" he cried. "Take 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!--d.a.m.n 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 G.o.d's sake, man," I shouted, "let us quit this."

He laughed derisively.

"The h.e.l.l 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 brought it down with all his sledge-hammer strength.

This time, I was ready for Joe Clark. I was strong. Oh!--I knew just how strong I was, and I gloried in my possession.

I had a firmer grip of my cudgel than before. There was going to be no breaking through as he had done last time; not if George Bremner's right arm was as good as he thought it was.

I met that terrific crash at the place I knew would tell. With the crack of a gun-shot, his club shivered into a dozen splinters against mine, leaving him with nothing but a few inches of wood in his torn hands.

He stood irresolute.

"Will you quit now?" I cried.

But he was game. "Not on your life," he shouted back. "We ain't started yet. Try your d.a.m.nedest."

He tossed aside the remainder of his club and jumped at me with his great hands groping. I stepped back and threw my stick deliberately far into the forest, then I stopped and met him with his own weapons.

After all, I was now on a more equal footing with him than I had been when both of us were armed.

We clinched, and locked together. We turned, and twisted, and struggled. He had the advantage over me in weight and sheer brute strength, but I had him shaded when it came to knowing how to use the strength I possessed.

We smashed at each other with our fists wherever and whenever we found an opening. Our clothes were soon in ribbons. Blood spurted from us as it would from stuck pigs.

Gasping for breath with roaring sounds,--choking,--half-blind, we staggered and swayed, smashing into trees and over bushes.

At last I missed my footing and stumbled over a protruding log, falling backward. Still riveted together,--Joe Clark came with me. The back of my head struck, with a sickening crash, into a tree and I knew no more.

When consciousness came back to me, I groaned for a return of the blessed sleep from which I had awakened, for every inch of my poor body was a racking agony.

A thousand noises drummed, and thumped, and roared in my head and the weight of the entire universe seemed to be lying across my chest.

I struggled weakly to free myself, and, as I recollected gradually what had happened to me, I put out my hands. They came in contact with something cold and clammy.

It was the b.l.o.o.d.y face of Joe Clark, who was lying on top of me.

I wriggled and struggled with the c.u.mbersome burden that had been strangling the flickering life in me. Every effort, every turn was a new pain, but all my hope was in getting free.

At last, I got from under him and staggered to my knees. I was a very babe for weakness then. I clutched at the tree-trunk for support and raised myself to my feet. I looked down on the pale face of Joe Clark, as he lay there, the moon on his face disclosing a great open gash on his forehead.

Evidently, he had struck the tree, face on, with the same impact as I had done backward.

"Oh, G.o.d!" I groaned. "He is dead, ... Joe Clark is..."

Then the blissful mists and darknesses came over me again and I crumpled to the earth.

CHAPTER XXIV

Two Maids and a Man

When next I awoke, it was amid conflicting sensations of pains and pleasantnesses. My eyes gradually took in my surroundings. Instead of being in Heaven, or the other place of future abode as I fully expected to be, I was lying on my own bed, in my own room, in a semi-darkness.

A quiet, shadowlike form was flitting about. I followed it with my eyes for a while, enjoying the fact that it did not know that I was watching it. Then it tip-toed toward me and bent over me.

All my doubts and fears departed. After all, I was in Heaven; for Mary,--the Mary I so loved,--was bending over me, crooning to me, with her face so near, and placing her cooling, soothing hand on my hot brow.

I must have tried to speak, for, as if far away, I could hear her enjoining me not to talk, but just lie quiet and I would soon be well.

She put a spoon to my mouth and, sup by sup, something warm, good and reviving slowly found its way down my throat.

What hard work it was opening my lips! What a dreadful task it was to swallow and how heavy my feet and hands seemed!--so heavy, I could not lift them.

As the singing voice crooned and hushed me, I grew, oh! so weary of the labour of swallowing and breathing that I dropped away again into glorious slumberland.

When again I opened my eyes, it was evening. My reading lamp was burning dimly on a table, near by. The air was warm from a crackling fire in the stove. Some one was kneeling at my bedside.