“Ah, that’s almost too good to be true.  I have dreamed about such a thing and I have been hungry to feel your throat since the first time I saw you.  It’s grown on me till shooting wouldn’t satisfy me.  Ever had the feeling?  Well, I’m going to choke the life out of you with my bare hands.”

McNamara squared himself.

“I wouldn’t advise you to try it.  I have lived longer than you and I was never beaten, but I know the feeling you speak about.  I have it now.”

His eyes roved rapidly up and down the other’s form, noting the lean thighs and close-drawn belt which lent the appearance of spareness, belied only by the neck and shoulders.  He had beaten better men, and he reasoned that if it came to a physical test in these cramped quarters his own great weight would more than offset any superior agility the miner might possess.  The longer he looked the more he yielded to his hatred of the man before him, and the more cruelly he longed to satisfy it.

“Take off your coat,” said Glenister.  “Now turn around.  All right!  I just wanted to see if you were lying about your gun.”

“I’ll kill you,” cried McNamara.

Glenister laid his six-shooter upon the safe and slipped off his own wet garment.  The difference was more marked now and the advantage more strongly with the receiver.  Though they had avoided allusion to it, each knew that this fight had nothing to do with the Midas and each realized whence sprang their fierce enmity.  And it was meet that they should come together thus.  It had been the one certain and logical event which they had felt inevitably approaching from long back.  And it was fitting, moreover, that they should fight alone and unwitnessed, armed only with the weapons of the wilderness, for they were both of the far, free lands, were both of the fighter’s type, and had both warred for the first, great prize.

They met ferociously.  McNamara aimed a fearful blow, but Glenister met him squarely, beating him off cleverly, stepping in and out, his arms swinging loosely from his shoulders like whalebone withes tipped with lead.  He moved lightly, his footing made doubly secure by reason of his soft-soled mukluks.  Recognizing his opponent’s greater weight, he undertook merely to stop the headlong rushes and remain out of reach as long as possible.  He struck the politician fairly in the mouth so that the man’s head snapped back and his fists went wild, then, before the arms could grasp him, the miner had broken ground and whipped another blow across; but McNamara was a boxer himself, so covered and blocked it.  The politician spat through his mashed lips and rushed again, sweeping his opponent from his feet.  Again Glenister’s fist shot forward like a lump of granite, but the other came on head down and the blow finished too high, landing on the big man’s brow.  A sudden darting agony paralyzed Roy’s hand, and he realized that he had broken the metacarpal bones and that henceforth it would be useless.