He was so made, his muscles were high-power explosives.
The levers of his body snapped into play like the jaws of steel traps.
And in addition to all this, his was that super-strength that is the dower of but one human in millions—a strength depending not on size but on degree, a supreme organic excellence residing in the stuff of the muscles themselves.
Thus, so swiftly could he apply a stress, that, before an opponent could become aware and resist, the aim of the stress had been accomplished.
In turn, so swiftly did he become aware of a stress applied to him, that he saved himself by resistance or by delivering a lightning counter-stress.
"It ain't no use you-all standing there," Daylight addressed the waiting group.
"You-all might as well get right down and take your baptizing.
You-all might down me any other day in the year, but on my birthday I want you-all to know I'm the best man.
Is that Pat Hanrahan's mug looking hungry and willing?
Come on, Pat."
Pat Hanrahan, ex-bare-knuckle-prize fighter and roughhouse-expert, stepped forth.
The two men came against each other in grips, and almost before he had exerted himself the Irishman found himself in the merciless vise of a half-Nelson that buried him head and shoulders in the snow.
Joe Hines, ex-lumber-jack, came down with an impact equal to a fall from a two-story building—his overthrow accomplished by a cross-buttock, delivered, he claimed, before he was ready.
There was nothing exhausting in all this to Daylight.
He did not heave and strain through long minutes.
No time, practically, was occupied.
His body exploded abruptly and terrifically in one instant, and on the next instant was relaxed.
Thus, Doc Watson, the gray-bearded, iron bodied man without a past, a fighting terror himself, was overthrown in the fraction of a second preceding his own onslaught. As he was in the act of gathering himself for a spring, Daylight was upon him, and with such fearful suddenness as to crush him backward and down.
Olaf Henderson, receiving his cue from this, attempted to take Daylight unaware, rushing upon him from one side as he stooped with extended hand to help Doc Watson up.
Daylight dropped on his hands and knees, receiving in his side Olaf's knees. Olaf's momentum carried him clear over the obstruction in a long, flying fall.
Before he could rise, Daylight had whirled him over on his back and was rubbing his face and ears with snow and shoving handfuls down his neck.
"Ay ban yust as good a man as you ban, Daylight," Olaf spluttered, as he pulled himself to his feet; "but by Yupiter, I ban navver see a grip like that."
French Louis was the last of the five, and he had seen enough to make him cautious.
He circled and baffled for a full minute before coming to grips; and for another full minute they strained and reeled without either winning the advantage.
And then, just as the contest was becoming interesting, Daylight effected one of his lightning shifts, changing all stresses and leverages and at the same time delivering one of his muscular explosions.
French Louis resisted till his huge frame crackled, and then, slowly, was forced over and under and downward.
"The winner pays!" Daylight cried; as he sprang to his feet and led the way back into the Tivoli.
"Surge along you-all! This way to the snake-room!"
They lined up against the long bar, in places two or three deep, stamping the frost from their moccasined feet, for outside the temperature was sixty below. Bettles, himself one of the gamest of the old-timers in deeds and daring ceased from his drunken lay of the "Sassafras Root," and titubated over to congratulate Daylight.
But in the midst of it he felt impelled to make a speech, and raised his voice oratorically.
"I tell you fellers I'm plum proud to call Daylight my friend.
We've hit the trail together afore now, and he's eighteen carat from his moccasins up, damn his mangy old hide, anyway.
He was a shaver when he first hit this country.
When you fellers was his age, you wa'n't dry behind the ears yet.
He never was no kid.
He was born a full-grown man.
An' I tell you a man had to be a man in them days.
This wa'n't no effete civilization like it's come to be now."
Bettles paused long enough to put his arm in a proper bear-hug around Daylight's neck.
"When you an' me mushed into the Yukon in the good ole days, it didn't rain soup and they wa'n't no free-lunch joints.
Our camp fires was lit where we killed our game, and most of the time we lived on salmon-tracks and rabbit-bellies—ain't I right?"
But at the roar of laughter that greeted his inversion, Bettles released the bear-hug and turned fiercely on them.
"Laugh, you mangy short-horns, laugh!
But I tell you plain and simple, the best of you ain't knee-high fit to tie Daylight's moccasin strings.
"Ain't I right, Campbell?
Ain't I right, Mac?
Daylight's one of the old guard, one of the real sour-doughs.
And in them days they wa'n't ary a steamboat or ary a trading-post, and we cusses had to live offen salmon-bellies and rabbit-tracks."
He gazed triumphantly around, and in the applause that followed arose cries for a speech from Daylight.
He signified his consent.