apped him across the mouth, saying:
"Fight, you idiot!"

Buddy's low, gasping cry had the effect of a roar; it left the room
echoing, then savagely he lunged at his assailant. He was blind, in him
was a sudden maniacal impulse to destroy; he had no thought of
consequences. Gray knocked him down.

It was a blow that would have felled an ox. As the youth lay half
dazed, he heard the other taunting him, mocking him. "Get up, you
lummox, and defend yourself. You'll be a man when I get through with
you."

Codes of combat are peculiar to localities. In the north woods, for
instance, lumberjacks fight with fist and heel; in the Southwest, when
a man is mad enough to fight at all, he is usually mad enough to kill.
As Buddy Briskow rose to his knees he groped for the nearest weapon,
the nearest missile, something--anything with which to slay. His hand
fell upon a heavy metal vase, and with this he struck wickedly as Gray
closed with him. This time they went down together and rolled across
the floor. The legs of a desk crashed and a litter of writing materials
was spilled over them.

Gray was the first to regain his feet, but his shirt had been torn half
off and he tasted blood upon his lips. He had met strong men in his
time, but never had he felt such a rocklike mass of bone and muscle as
now. Buddy was like a kicking horse; his fists were as hard as hoofs,
and that which they smote they crushed or bruised or lacerated. He
possessed now the supreme strength of a madman, and he was quite
insensible to pain. He was uttering strange animal sounds.

"Shut up!" Gray panted. "Have the guts to--keep still. You'll--rouse
the--"

He dodged an awkward swinging blow from the giant and sent him reeling.
Buddy fetched up against the solid wall with a crash, for Gray had
centered every pound of his weight behind his punch, but the countryman
rebounded like a thing of rubber and again they clinched.

A room cluttered with heavy furniture is not like a boxing ring. In
spite of Gray's skill and an agility uncommon in a man of his size, it
was impossible to stop the other's rushes or to avoid them. Straining
with each other they ricocheted against tables and chairs, and only the
fact that much of the furniture was padded, and the floor thickly
carpeted, prevented the sound of their struggle from alarming the
occupants of the halls and the lobby. They fought furiously, moving the
while like two wrestlers trying for flying holds; time and