uncertain which way to go. From his throat
there rippled a low peal of joyous mirth. The youth in him delighted
in the free-for-all from which he had just emerged.

Then again he became aware of Durand. The man was not alone. He had
with him a hulking ruffian whose heavy, hunched shoulders told of
strength. There was a hint of the gorilla in the way the long arms
hung straight from the shoulders as he leaned forward. Both of the men
were watching the cowpuncher as steadily as alley cats do a housefinch.

"Hell's going to pop in about three seconds," announced Clay to himself.

Silently, without lifting their eyes from their victim for an instant,
the two men moved apart to take him on both sides. He clung to the
wall, forcing a frontal attack. The laughter had gone out of his eyes
now. They had hardened to pinpoints. This time it was no amateur
horseplay. He was fighting for his life. No need to tell Clay Lindsay
that the New York gangster meant to leave him as good as dead.

The men rushed him. He fought them back with clean hard blows. Jerry
bored in like a wild bull. Clay caught him off his balance, using a
short arm jolt which had back of it all that twenty-three years of
clean outdoors Arizona could give. The gangster hit the pavement hard.

He got up furious and charged again. The Arizonan, busy with the other
man, tried to sidestep. An uppercut jarred him to the heel. In that
instant of time before his knees began to sag beneath him his brain
flashed the news that Durand had struck him on the chin with brass
knucks. He crumpled up and went down, still alive to what was going
on, but unable to move in his own defense. Weakly he tried to protect
his face and sides from the kicks of a heavy boot. Then he floated
balloon-like in space and vanished into unconsciousness.

CHAPTER VIII

"THE BEST SINGLE-BARRELED SPORT IVER I MET"

Clay drifted back to a world in which the machinery of his body
creaked. He turned his head, and a racking pain shot down his neck.
He moved a leg, and every muscle in it ached. From head to foot he was
sore.

Voices somewhere in space, detached from any personal ownership,
floated vaguely to him. Presently these resolved themselves into words
and sentences.

"We're not to make a pinch, Tim. That's the word he gave me before he
left. This is wan av Jerry's private little wars and he don't want a
judge askin' a lot of unnicessary questions, y' underst