As for the seeker after action, he had at first reached after his revolver, but he changed his mind at the last instant and instead picked up the great poker which leaned against the stove.  It was a ponderous weapon and he had to wield it in both hands.  As he swung it around his head there was a yell from men ducking out of the way, and Pale Annie curled his hand again around his favorite empty bottle.  He had no good opportunity to demonstrate its efficiency, however.  Mac Strann, crouching in the position from which he had catapulted the red-haired man, cast upwards a single glance at the other brother, and then he sprang in.  The poker hissed through the air with the vigour of a strong man’s arms behind it and it would have cracked the head of Mac Strann like an empty egg-shell if it had hit its mark.  But it was heaved too high, and Mac Strann went in like a football player rushing the line, almost doubled up against the floor as he ran.  His shoulders struck the other hardly higher than the knees, and they went down together, but so doing the head of Mac Strann’s victim cracked against the floor, and he also was still.

The exploit was greeted by a yell of applause and then someone proposed a cheer, and it was given.  It died off short on the lips of the applauders, however, for it was seen that Mac Strann was not yet done with his work, and he went about it in a manner which made men sober suddenly and exchange glances.

First the stranger dragged the two brothers together, laying one of them face down on the floor.  The second he placed over the first, back to back.  Next he picked up the long poker from the floor and slipped it under the head and down to the neck of the first man.  The bystanders watched in utter silence, with a touch of horror coming now in their eyes.

Now Mac Strann caught the ends of the iron and began to twist up on them.  There was no result at first.  He refreshed his hold and tried again.  The sleeves of his shirt were seen to swell and then grow hard and taut with vast play of muscle beneath.  His head bowed lower between his shoulders, and those shoulders trembled, and the muscles over them quivered like heat-waves rising of a spring morning.  There was a creaking, now, and then the iron was seen to shiver and then bend, slowly, and once it was wrenched out of the horizontal, the motion was more and more rapid.  Until, when the giant was done with his labor, the ends of the iron over-lapped around the necks of the two luckless brothers.  Mac Strann stepped back and surveyed his work; the rest of the room was in silence, saving that the red-headed man was coming back to consciousness and now writhed and groaned feebly.  He could not rise; that was manifest, for the thick band of iron tied his neck to the neck of his brother.

Upon this scene Mac Strann gazed with a thoughtful air and then stepped to the side of the room where stood a bucket of dirty water, recently used for mopping behind the bar.  This he caught up, returned, and dashed the black, greasy water over the pair.