Adventure, August 1917 — page 53: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

The Northwoman a blow that would have dropped a moose. One chair leg struck him in the stomach, another in the jaw. The weight of the whole carried him off his feet and he went back and down against the wall at the rear of the store. Partly stunned, the breath knocked out of him, Stanton was unable to move when he saw the trader, now transformed into a demon of action and energy, recover the chair and swing it above his head, bringing it down over his opponent with a force that would brain him. Stanton tried to dodge, threw up one elbow. There was a splinter- ing crash, a sharp pain in his shoulder. He believed it had meant the end, but through the wreckage of the great chair he saw Fleenor leaping onto his stomach with both feet. Stanton did not realize that his life had been saved only because the chair was higher than those Fleenor had once been accus- tomed to swing and that it had crashed against the wall above his head, one splinter driving into his shoulder. He did realize, however, in the three or four seconds which had elapsed site the knife had been flipped at his heart, that here was a method of warfare of which he had not even heard. Never in his life had he had a serious physical encounter with any one. Then, in the Northland it was a case of stand up and fight openly. The unwritten rules were primitive. They permitted many things never seen in the prize-ring. But at least there was an underlying spirit of honesty and a rigid adherence to nature’s own weapons. But if Stanton thought of these things it was through a red curtain. The treachery of Fleenor’s first attack, the very evident intention to stamp and crush and cut the life out of him, transformed the young missionary into a scarlet-visioned animal. While Fleenor was in the middle of his leap Stanton rolled quickly away from the wall and rose to his hands and’ knees through the wreckage of the chair. He felt the trader’s heels glance off his ribs as he came down and at once sprang up and to his feet. When Fleenor struck the floor and knew -he had missed, he thrust against the wall . with both hands and, as he bounced back, whirled in mid-air and faced Stanton. Instantly his right fist shot up and out, much as it had when Joan had darted past ol him toward the door. He had never known it to fail in close quarters, that blow, and it caught Stanton fairly on the side of the jaw. But Fleenor, too, was to be treated to a new kind of fight, or fighter. Back of his adversary were generations of clean living, of physical fitness for its own sake, of sleep in the dark hours and exertion in the open . sunlight. There were no weakening effects of disease or drink or drugs, of foul air and transformed days, of fear or of guilt. Stanton’s head rocked back, but he did not falter. His two arms reached out for the trader. A left hook to his stomach jarred him, made him gasp, but there was no weakening in his forward movement. Striking right and left, each blow timed and distanced to a hair, Fleenor fell back more from his wonder that the missionary did not go down than from any dread of the pee arms that reached and reached for And then Stanton rushed. By sheer weight and the strength of his arms, he smothered the blows that did not fail in their regular tattoo. He did not even lower his head as he came straight on. He seemed only to walk into the pistoned fists, past them and to his mark. With a quick dip of his shoulders he grasped Fleenor about the waist and lifted him from the floor. Stanton’s body twisted and the trader’s feet were whirled out, his head down. As high as his shoulders the missionary lifted him, and then with all his maddened strength hurled him to the floor. It was sufficient. In one instant, in one act, the accumulated vigor and vitality and nerve force of a century had been fused to sublimation. Fleenor, triumphant vet- eran of a thousand broils, lay crushed and broken before a physical fitness and courage of which he had never dreamed. CHAPTER XV THE SECOND BATTLE Gis knew only vaguely that he had conquered. He was still blinded and dazzled by the incandescent glare of the passion which had seized him. The cause of that passion continued to in- flame him. Not once had the jarring fists of the trader dislodged the thought of Joan. He had meant to kill. As he stood there cCoMmiclsoo © 5}