[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.Several times as they circled he uppercut Corrigan with the right, he retreating, side-stepping; Corrigan following him doggedly, slashing venomously at him, hitting him occasionally.Corrigan could not hurt him, and he could not resist laughing at Corrigan’s face—it was so hideously repulsive.A man came out of the front door of Hanrahan’s saloon across the street from the bank building, and stood in the street for a moment, looking about him.Had Miss Benham seen the man she would have recognized him as the one who had previously come out of the saloon to greet the rider with: “Well, if it ain’t ol’ ‘Brand’!” He saw the black horse standing in front of the bank building, but Trevison was nowhere in sight.The man mumbled: “I don’t want him to git away without me seein’ him,” and crossed the street to the bank window and peered inside.He saw Braman peering through a half-open door at the rear of the banking room, and he heard sounds—queer, jarring sounds that made the glass window in front of him rattle and quiver.He dove around to the side of the building and looked in a window.He stood for a moment, watching with bulging eyes, half drew a pistol, thought better of the notion and replaced it, and then darted back to the saloon from which he had emerged, croaking hoarsely: “Fight! fight!”* * *Trevison had not had the agility to evade one of Corrigan’s heavy blows.It had caught him as he had tried to duck, striking fairly on the point of the jaw, and he was badly dazed.But he still grinned mockingly at his enemy as the latter followed him, tensed, eager, snarling.He evaded other blows that would have finished him—through instinct, it seemed to Corrigan; and though there was little strength left in him he kept working his right fist through Corrigan’s guard and into his face, pecking away at it until it seemed to be cut to ribbons.Voices came from somewhere in the banking room, voices raised in altercation.Neither of the two men, raging around the rear room, heard them—they had become insensate savages oblivious of their surroundings, drunken with passion, with the blood-mania gripping their brains.Trevison had brought the last ounce of his remaining strength into play and had landed a crushing blow on Corrigan’s chin.The big man was wabbling crazily about in the general direction of Trevison, swinging his arms wildly, Trevison evading him, snapping home blows that landed smackingly without doing much damage.They served merely to keep Corrigan in the semi-comatose state in which Trevison’s last hard blow had left him.And that last blow had sapped Trevison’s strength; his spirit alone had survived the drunken orgy of rage and hatred.As the tumult around him increased—the tramp of many feet, scuffling; harsh, discordant voices, curses, yells of protest, threats—not a sound of which he heard, so intent was he with his work of battering his adversary, he ceased to retreat from Corrigan, and as the latter shuffled toward him he stiffened and drove his right fist into the big man’s face.Corrigan cursed and grunted, but lunged forward again.They swung at the same instant—Trevison’s right just grazing Corrigan’s jaw; Corrigan’s blow, full and sweeping, thudding against Trevison’s left ear.Trevison’s head rolled, his chin sagged to his chest, and his knees doubled like hinges.Corrigan smirked malevolently and drove forward again.But he was too eager, and his blows missed the reeling target that, with arms hanging wearily at his sides, still instinctively kept to his feet, the taunting smile, now becoming bitterly contemptuous, still on his face.It meant that though exhausted, his arm broken, he felt only scorn for Corrigan’s prowess as a fighter.Fighting off the weariness he lunged forward again, swinging the now deadened right arm at the blur Corrigan made in front of him.Something collided with him—a human form—and thinking it was Corrigan, clinching with him, he grasped it.The momentum of the object, and his own weakness, carried him back and down, and with the object in his grasp he fell, underneath, to the floor.He saw a face close to his—Braman’s—and remembering that the banker had tripped him, he began to work his right fist into the other’s face.He would have finished Braman.He did not know that the man who had greeted him as “ol’ ‘Brand’” had smashed the banker in the forehead with the butt of a pistol when the banker had tried to bar his progress at the doorway; he was not aware that the force of the blow had hurled Braman against him, and that the latter, half unconscious, was not defending himself [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

zanotowane.pl

doc.pisz.pl

pdf.pisz.pl

listy-do-eda.opx.pl