There was no time to parley or to decide. Fate acted rapidly through
the agency of a half-witted mind. Juan the Mexican was regarding the
Indian intently. Perhaps he gathered but little of the real meaning of
that which had transpired, but something in the act or look of the
chieftain aroused and enraged him. He saw and understood the
challenge, and he counted nothing further. With one swift upheaval of
his giant body, he shook off restraining hands and sprang forward. He
stripped off his own light upper garment, and stood as naked and more
colossal than his foe. Weapon of his own he had none, nor cared for
any. More primitive even than his antagonist, he sought for nothing
letter than the first weapon of primeval man, a club, which should
extend the sweep of his own arm. From the hand of the nearest Indian
he snatched a war club, not dissimilar to that which hung at White
Calf's wrist, a stone-headed beetle, grooved and bound fast with
rawhide to a long, slender, hard-wood handle, which in turn was
sheathed in a heavy rawhide covering, shrunk into a steel-like
re-enforcement. Armed alike, naked alike, savage alike, and purely
animal in the blind desire of battle, the two were at issue before a
hand could stay them. All chance of delay or separation was gone.
Both white and red men fell back and made arena for a unique and awful
combat.

There was a moment of measuring, that grim advance balance struck when
two strong men meet for a struggle which for either may end alone in
death. The Indian was magnificent in mien, superb in confidence. Fear
was not in him. His vast figure, nourished on sweet meat of the
plains, fed by pure air and developed by continual exercise, showed
like the torso of a minor Hercules, powerful but not sluggish in its
power. His broad and deep chest, here and there spotted with white
scars, arched widely for the vital organs, but showed no clogging fat.
His legs were corded and thin. His arms were also slender, but showing
full of easy-playing muscles with power of rapid and unhampered
strength. Two or three inches above the six-feet mark he stood as he
cast off his war bonnet and swept back a hand over the standing eagle
plumes, whipped fast to his braided hair. White Calf was himself a
giant.

Yet huge and menacing as he stood, the figure opposed to him was still
more formidable. Juan, the _mozo_ overtopped him by nearly half a
head, and was as broad or broader in the shou