I did not want to quarrel. Not that I was afraid of him, even knowing, as I did, that I would be likely to get much the worse of any possible encounter;--but, for Rita's sake, I preferred peace. "My good fellow," I said, "why in heaven's name can't you talk sense? I have no game, as you call it, with Rita. "If you would only play straight with her, you might get her yourself. But I'll tell you this,--skulking around other people's property, after the skirts of a woman, never yet brought a man anything but rebuffs." "Aw!--cut out your damned yapping, Bremner," he yelled furiously. "Who the hell wants any of your jaw? Play straight the devil! You're some yellow cuss to talk to anybody about playin' straight." It was all I could do to keep my temper in check. "What d'ye bring her over to your place at night for, if you're playin' straight?" he continued. "To teach her grammar;--that's all," I exclaimed. "Grammar be damned," he thundered. "What d'ye put up blinds for if you're playin' straight?" "To keep skulkers from seeing how respectable people spend their evenings," I shot at him. "You're a confounded liar," he yelled, beside himself. "I know what you're up to, with your oily tongue and your Jim Dandy style. "Rita was mine before you ever set your damned dial in Golden Crescent. She'd 've been mine for keeps by this time, but you got her goin'. Now you're usin' her to pass the time, keepin' men who want to from marryin' her." With a black madness inside me, I sprang in on him. He stepped aside. "No, you don't!" he cried. "Take that." He threw one of his clubs at my feet. "Fists ain't no good this trip, Mister Man. I was goin' to kill you, but I thought maybe it'd look better if we fight and let the best man win." I stood undecided, looking first at this great mountain of infuriated humanity and then at the club he had tossed to me;--while around us were the great trees, the streams of ghostly moonlight and the looming blacknesses. "Come on!--damn you for a yellow-gut. Take that up before I open your skull with this." He prodded me full in the chest with the end of his weapon. I needed no second bidding. Evidently, it was he or I for it. In fact, since the moment we first met at Golden Crescent that had been the issue with which I had always been confronted. Joe Clark or George Bremner!--one of us had to go down under the heel of the other. I grabbed up the club and stood on guard for the terrific onslaught Joe immediately made on me. He threw his arm in the air and came in on me like a mad buffalo. Had the blow he aimed ever fallen with all its original force, these lines never would have been written; but its strength was partly shorn by the club coming in contact with the overhanging branch of a tree. I parried that blow, but still it beat down my guard and the club grazed my head.