Nearer and
still nearer to each other drew the two men. And now Dupont crouched
still more, and Joe Delesse held his breath. He noticed that Reese
Beaudin was standing almost on the tips of his toes--that each instant he
seemed prepared, like a runner, for sudden flight. Five feet--four--and
Dupont leapt in, his huge arms swinging like the limb of a tree, and his
weight following with crushing force behind his blow. For an instant it
seemed as though Reese Beaudin had stood to meet that fatal rush, but in
that same instant--so swiftly that only the hooded stranger knew what had
happened--he was out of the way, and his left arm seemed to shoot
downward, and then up, and then his right straight out, and then again
his left arm downward, and up--and it was the third blow, all swift as
lightning, that brought a yell from the hooded stranger. For though none
but the stranger had seen it, Jacques Dupont's head snapped back--and all
saw the fourth blow that sent him reeling like a man struck by a club.
There was no sound now. A mental and a vocal paralysis seized upon the
inhabitants of Lac Bain. Never had they seen fighting like this fighting
of Reese Beaudin. Until now had they lived to see the science of the
sawdust ring pitted against the brute force of Brobdingnagian, of Antaeus
and Goliath. For Reese Beaudin's fighting was a fighting without tricks
that they could see.
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