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torn beyond his limits staggered or was carried from the action over theoutstretched forms of his predecessors, while in the middle the meiee raged on without flagging. Those left sported shiners and smeared lips like I hadn’t seen since the bank runs in the early days of the Panic. All about their feet bloody teeth twinkled in the firelight.
    One brawler in particular, a squat breed whose powerful build belied the iron-gray hair falling about his shoulders, looked to be giving more than he got, as he answered his opponents’ blows with Helena Haymakers that sent them reeling back into the crowd of spectators. Little by little, as Hudspeth and I watched from the backs of our horses, the heaving mass dwindled until only a handful remained to slug it out among themselves, with the old man in the heart of it. The air was heavy with the rank smell of turned earth and sweat.
    All in all, I reflected, this spectacle was playing hell with what I’d been told about the gentle ways of the métis. But then there are exceptions to every rule.
    Down to the bare boards, the rules of combat underwent a subtle change. The younger men, apparently recognizing the threat to their reputations should they fall to someone thirty years their senior, stopped fighting each other and teamed up, at odds of six to one, to take out the old man. They whooped and hollered and charged headlong into a beehive.
    He was a magnificent specimen, this old breed who could have been anywhere from fifty to seventy-five but fought like a Blackfoot brave in his twenties. Muscles writhed beneath his naked torso like snakes beneath a sheet, and scars thick as cables crisscrossed his great chest and shoulders. He reminded me of a king buffalo I had once seen defending its throne. Old and grizzled though he was, he was still more than a match for the youngsters who challenged his authority. Besieged from all sides, he met them in silence, snaggled teeth bared in a determined grin as he felled this one with a blow and hooked that one viciously in the groin with the toe of a moccasin. Those lucky enough to connect found their best shots glancing off him like a blacksmith’shammer bounding from an anvil. Then a clout from an axelike fist would bring their participation to an end. In this manner he disposed of four assailants in as many minutes.
    He had both arms wrapped around a fifth and was bear-hugging him into unconsciousness when the sixth, a lean young breed with features more Indian than white, snatched up a chunk of wood from the fire and charged him from behind, swinging the glowing end above his head. I have no special love for rules, but this seemed to be going astray from the spirit of healthy competition. I drew my revolver and was debating whether I should drop him and risk the hostility of the tribe or gamble on a dime-novel try at shooting the club out of his hand, when a shot like the Fourth of July in Chinatown crashed within a foot of my left ear. The young breed shrieked, dropped his weapon, and clapped a hand to the side of his head. It came back bloody.
    Every eye in the vicinity, including mine, swung to the big man astride the horse next to my own. A plume of metallic gray smoke wandered from the snout of the Smith & Wesson in Hudspeth’s right hand while with the other he struggled to keep his startled mount under control. He had drawn the clumsy thing from its unlikely position beneath his left arm and fired while I was still figuring the angles. And he said he was slowing down.
    The old man wasn’t one to let the grass grow. While his would-be attacker was still hopping around and lamenting the loss of his right ear, he whirled and slung the limp breed he was holding six feet into the other’s arms. One hundred and sixty pounds of métis struck him full in the chest, tore the wind from his lungs in a loud
woof
, and bore him, a tangle of arms and legs, to the ground on the other side of the fire.”
    For a long