Mike Haig's face was a yellowish colour with only his cheeks and his
nose still flushed with the tiny burst of veins beneath the surface of
the skin, but there was no colour in his lips. Each breath he drew
sobbed in his throat. He started back towards Hendry, still breathing
that way, and his mouth was working as he tried to force it to speak.
As he came on he unslung the rifle from his shoulder.
'Haig! said Bruce sharply.
'This time - you you bloody - this is the last,-' mouthed Haig.
'Watch it, Bucko!' Hendry warned him. He stepped back, clumsily trying
to fit the loaded magazine on to his rifle.
Mike Haig dropped the point of his bayonet to the level of
Hendry's stomach.
'Haig!' shouted Bruce, and Haig charged surprisingly fast for a man of
his age, leaning forward, leading with the bayonet at Hendry's
stomach, the incoherent mouthings reaching their climax in a formless
bellow.
'Come on, then!' Hendry answered him and stepped forward. As they came
together Hendry swept the bayonet to one side with the butt of his own
rifle. The point went under his armpit and they collided chest to chest,
staggering as Haig's weight carried them backwards. Hendry dropped his
rifle and locked both arms round Haig's neck, forcing his head back so
that his face was tilted up at the right angle.
'Look out, Mike, he's going to butt!' Bruce had recognized the move, but
his warning came too late. Hendry's head jerked forward and
Mike gasped as the front of Hendry's steel helmet caught him across the
bridge of his nose. The rifle slipped from Mike's grip and fell into the
road, he lifted his hands and covered his face with Spread fingers and
the redness oozed out between them.
Again Hendry's head jerked forward like a hammer and again Mike gasped
as the steel smashed into his face and fingers.
'Knee him, Mike!' Bruce yelled as he tried to take up a position from
which to intervene, but they were staggering in a circle, turning like a
wheel and Bruce could not get in.
Hendry's legs were braced apart as he drew his head back to Strike
again, and Mike's knee went up between them, all the way up with power
into the fork of Hendry's crotch.
Breaking from the clinch, his mouth open in a silent scream of agony,
Hendry doubled up with both hands holding his lower stomach, and sagged
slowly on to his knees in the dust.
Dazed, with blood running into his mouth, Mike fumbled with the canvas
flap of his holster.
'I'll kill you, you murdering swine.' The pistol came out into his right
hand; short-barrelled, blue and ugly.
Bruce stepped up behind him, his thumb found the nerve centre below the
elbow and as he dug in the pistol dropped from Mike's paralysed hand and
dangled on its lanyard against his knee.
Ruffy, stop him,' Bruce shouted, for Hendry was clawing painfully at the
rifle that lay in the dust beside him.
'Got it, boss!' Ruffy stooped quickly over the crawling body at his
feet, in one swift movement opened the flap of the holster, drew the
