"I'll give him something to smile about," said Sullivan.

"Got a match?" Bell asked him.

Sullivan lowered his hands and stared. "What?"

"A match. A lucifer. I need more light to show you this picture I have in my pocket."

"Wlhat? "

"You asked, what's the joke. I'm hunting a killer. The same killer who hired you hydrophobic skunks to kill me. Here's the joke: you hydrophobic skunks are going to tell me what he looks like."

Sullivan rushed at Bell, throwing a vicious right at his face. Bell moved quickly. The fist whizzed over his head like a boulder, and he brought his left down on the Sullivan's head as he stumbled from the force of missing Bell. It drove Sullivan to the ground like a pile driver. This time when Corbett rushed in from the side, Bell was ready, and he backhanded Corbett with the same left, smashing his nose with a sharp crack.

Corbett grunted, wheeling gracefully out of a predicament that would have seen an ordinary mortal fall. He whipped his left high to protect his chin from Bell's right cross and kept his right low to block Bell's left to the stomach. Conversationally, he said, "Here's one they didn't teach you in college," and hit Bell with a one-two that nearly tore his head off.

Sullivan slugged Bell as he hurtled past. The full force of the blow struck just above his temple and knocked him flat. The pain was sharp as a needle in his brain. But the fact that he felt pain at all meant he was still alive, and conscious that Sullivan and Corbett were moving in for the kill. His head was spinning, and he had to push with his hands to regain his feet.

"Gentlemen, this is your last chance. Is this the man who paid you to kill me?"

Sullivan's powerful jab knocked the paper from Bell's hand.

Bell straightened up as much as he could, given the searing pain in his ribs, and managed to elude the combination Sullivan threw next. "I'll take you next," he taunted Sullivan. "Soon as I teach your partner something I learned in college." Then he turned his scorn on Corbett. "If you were half as good as you think you are, you wouldn't be hiring yourself out to beat people up in a godforsaken railroad town."

It worked. As table talk could smoke out intentions in poker, fight talk provoked recklessness. Corbett shoved Sullivan aside.

"Get out of my way! I'm going to make this son of a bitch weep before he dies."

He charged in a rage, throwing punches like cannon fire.

Bell knew he had taken too much punishment to count on speed. He had one last chance to gather all his strength into one killing blow. Too tired to slip the punches, he absorbed two, stepped inside the next, and hit Corbett hard on the jaw, which snapped Corbett's head back. Then Bell unleashed a right with every ounce of his strength and plunged it into Corbett's body. The breath exploded out of the man, and he collapsed as if his knees had turned to water. Fighting to the last, he lunged for Bell's throat as he went down but fell short.