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grinned. “It’ll come in a minute.”
    He heard boots pounding in the kitchen, and then Red Shibe appeared in the doorway. Without looking at him Frank tossed his gun over to Red, and it was caught. Frank took off his Stetson, laid it on the table and spoke softly. “You started somethin’ I didn’t rightly get time to finish the other night, Milabel.”
    Milabel’s hands slowly came down to his sides. “So that’s it,” he said. “If I lick you, I get a shot in the back.”
    â€œIf you lick me,” Frank said dryly, “I’ll shoot myself in the back.”
    He overturned the table against the wall in one big heave, and there was nothing between him and Milabel except fifteen feet of clear floor space.
    â€œI hate to let you drag back to that board of directors you call a boss with the wrong ideas in your head,” Frank said. “I made a brag the other night. I’ll make another one. I’ll pull those leather ears off your thick head and stuff them up your nose, Milabel. And I’m comin’ over now.”
    Milabel wrenched his hat off his head, sailed it into a corner and lunged across at Frank, one arm cocked below his waist for a sledge-hammer blow. It was nice aim, nice timing, and it would have felled an ox. Only it never landed. Frank stepped inside the swing, let it wrap around his neck, shot a hook into Milabel’s soft belly; and when Milabel jackknifed Frank raised a shoulder to catch Milabel’s chin. His jaw clacked shut and he was straightened up, and then Frank put a flat palm in the man’s face and shoved, and Milabel sat down abruptly. The satisfaction in his face had given way to surprise.
    Frank drawled, “Hell, stand up. I haven’t hit you yet.”
    Milabel came to his feet with a growl. Frank stepped back, grinning wolfishly. Milabel had an inch on Frank’s even six feet and forty pounds over Frank’s one hundred and seventy, and confident that this would tell in the end, he rushed in again, arms flailing. Frank met him, chopping down on Milabel’s thick arms, and then his fist drove into Milabel’s face like a two-by-four battering-ram. Then both of them forgot what skill they had ever acquired and stood toe to toe, slugging. It was like a fight in some dim jungle, vicious and savage and deadly; and the only sounds were the solid smacking of driven bone on flesh and the grunting gusty breathing.
    Frank was aiming for Milabel’s face, which the big man did not try to guard, and slowly Frank chopped blow after sickening blow into it, cutting Milabel’s lips, flattening his face, tearing an eyebrow until the blood streamed down into his face and blinded him. And then Milabel, dazed and his fury riding every wild swing, was getting sanity pounded into him. He backed up a step, and like a tiger scenting the kill, Frank stepped in, his blows surer, more savage, swifter. He hooked a left into Milabel’s midriff, and the big foreman grunted and rocked back on his heels, and Frank lashed out, all his weight behind a blow that struck Milabel on the shelving point of his jaw and skidded alongside it to tear his ear. Milabel’s head went back, and he tripped and fell on his back and rolled over. He came to his feet groggily, and now he had a bench in both hands.
    Frank said, without looking at Shibe, “Let him go, Red,” and Milabel, cursing through swollen lips, threw the bench. It was too big to dodge, and Frank caught it, and the weight of it sent him sprawling. Milabel lunged for him, his tramp shaking the house. Frank rolled and came up, and with one wicked cutting blow he knocked Milabel down. The foreman came unsteadily to his feet, his guard not yet up, and Frank knocked him down again.
    Shaking his head, Milabel shoved himself erect, and Frank hit him again in the face and harder. And when Milabel started to slump again Frank caught him by the shirt front and held him and