“Hang tough, Bill,” said one man quietly; and then in a second the slightly superior brains in Sheedy’s head had turned the battle. Like a flash he dropped flat on his back as his fresh assailant reached out to grip him. The furious Slav followed him helplessly in the fall; and a single gruff, appreciative shout came from the few “white men.” For they had seen, even as the Slav stumbled, Bill Sheedy’s left leg shoot up like a catapult, burying the calked shoe to the ankle in the man’s soft middle and flinging him to one side, a shuddering, senseless wreck. The man with his arms around Sheedy’s leg looked up and saw. He was alone now, alone against the big man who had knocked him down with such ease. Toppy saw the man’s mouth open and his face go yellow. “Na, na, na!” he cried piteously, as Sheedy’s blows again rained upon him. “I give up, give up, give up!” He tried to bury his face in Bill’s thigh; and Bill, mad with success, strove to pound him loose. “Kill him, Bill!” said one of the Irishmen quietly. “You got him now; kill him.” “Stop.” Reivers did not raise his voice. He seemed scarcely interested. Yet the roars around the ring died down. Sheedy stopped a blow half delivered and dropped his arms. The Slav released his clawlike hold and ran, sobbing, toward his prostrate brother. “All right, Bill; you keep the money—for all them,” said Reivers. “Clear out the ring, boys, and get that other pair in there.” The guards, springing into the ring as if under a lash, picked up the senseless man and thrust him like a sack of grain through the ropes and on to the ground at the feet of a group of his countrymen. Toppy saw these pick the man up and bear him away. The man’s head hung down limply and dragged on the ground, and a thin stream of blood ran steadily out of one side of his mouth. His brother followed, loudly calling him by name. “Very efficacious, that left leg of Bill’s; eh, Treplin?” said Reivers lightly. “Bill was the superior creature there. He had the wit and will to survive in a crisis; therefore he is entitled to the rewards of the superior over the inferior, which in this case means the ninety-eight dollars which the Torta boys once had. That’s justice—natural justice for you, Treplin; and all the fumbling efforts of the lawmakers who’ve tried through the ages to reduce life to a pen-and-paper basis haven’t been able to change the old rule one bit. “I’ll admit that courts and all the fakery that goes with them have reduced the thing to a battle of brains, but after all it’s the same old battle; the stronger win and hold. And,” he concluded, waving his hand at the crowd, “you’ll admit that Bill, and those Torta boys wouldn’t be at their best in a contest of intelligence.” Toppy refused Reivers the pleasure of seeing how the brutality of the affair disgusted him.