Page:Randall Parrish - The Red Mist.djvu/410

 390 him out into the open where I could see better. I was fighting now, with no thought of protecting myself, only of hurting him. I tried for a knock-out but he blocked me, clinging desperately to my arm. I tore loose once more, flinging him aside bewildered and breathless.

"Now, Raymond," I said, "that trick doesn't work a second time. Stand up to it, you coward! You wanted a fight, and you are going to have one. What! the gun again? I guess not."

He had jerked it out before I reached him, but my hand closed over his—the hammer fell, digging into the flesh of my thumb, and the pain maddened me; he staggered back from the impetus of my body, and I tore loose, the iron still imbedded in my flesh, and struck him. The pearl handle crashed to the side of his head, tearing my hand in jagged wound, but he went over, dropping to the grass as if dead. He gave no moan, no sound; for an instant his limbs twitched, and then he lay there, curled into a ball. I stared down at him, panting, scarcely realizing just what had occurred. An instant before he had been fighting like a tiger cat, now he was a motionless, grotesque shadow. Blood streamed from my lacerated hand, and I bound up the wound in a neckerchief stripped from around my throat, hardly conscious of the pain, my breath steadying,