“I’d bet on ’im even.  I’d give odds if I had to.  He’ll fight all around the Dane.  The Dane won’t have no method.”

“But he’s got the weight,” said the other dubiously.  “Look at his jaws, an’ his shoulders—­”

“An’ his big feet, an’ his soft throat, an’ the clumsy thickness of his belly,” interrupted the Kootenay man.  “For Gawd’s sake, man, take my word for it, an’ don’t put your money on the Dane!”

Others thrust themselves between them.  At first Kazan had snarled at all these faces about him.  But now he lay back against the boarded side of the cage and eyed them sullenly from between his forepaws.

The fight was to be pulled off in Barker’s place, a combination of saloon and cafe.  The benches and tables had been cleared out and in the center of the one big room a cage ten feet square rested on a platform three and a half feet from the floor.  Seats for the three hundred spectators were drawn closely around this.  Suspended just above the open top of the cage were two big oil lamps with glass reflectors.

It was eight o’clock when Harker, McTrigger and two other men bore Kazan to the arena by means of the wooden bars that projected from the bottom of his cage.  The big Dane was already in the fighting cage.  He stood blinking his eyes in the brilliant light of the reflecting lamps.  He pricked up his ears when he saw Kazan.  Kazan did not show his fangs.  Neither revealed the expected animosity.  It was the first they had seen of each other, and a murmur of disappointment swept the ranks of the three hundred men.  The Dane remained as motionless as a rock when Kazan was prodded from his own cage into the fighting cage.  He did not leap or snarl.  He regarded Kazan with a dubious questioning poise to his splendid head, and then looked again to the expectant and excited faces of the waiting men.  For a few moments Kazan stood stiff-legged, facing the Dane.  Then his shoulders dropped, and he, too, coolly faced the crowd that had expected a fight to the death.  A laugh of derision swept through the closely seated rows.  Catcalls, jeering taunts flung at McTrigger and Harker, and angry voices demanding their money back mingled with a tumult of growing discontent.  Sandy’s face was red with mortification and rage.  The blue veins in Barker’s forehead had swollen twice their normal size.  He shook his fist in the face of the crowd, and shouted: 

“Wait!  Give ’em a chance, you dam’ fools!”

At his words every voice was stilled.  Kazan had turned.  He was facing the huge Dane.  And the Dane had turned his eyes to Kazan.  Cautiously, prepared for a lunge or a sidestep, Kazan advanced a little.  The Dane’s shoulders bristled.  He, too, advanced upon Kazan.  Four feet apart they stood rigid.  One could have heard a whisper in the room now.  Sandy and Harker, standing close to the cage, scarcely breathed.  Splendid in every limb and muscle, warriors of a hundred fights, and