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The fighters wrap their wrists and the backs of their hands in tape and gauze and leave their knuckles bare. They fight in short rounds. Nobody kicks, nobody bites, and nobody hits a man who's down. When I say stop, they stop.

The opening fight is the redheaded welder Dutch bet on against a roofer out of Llano. The roofer has the longer arms, and for most of the fight he keeps the welder off him, snapping jab after jab into his face.

In the last round, the welder walks straight through one of those jabs and takes it square on the mouth. He hooks the roofer under the ribs so hard the roofer folds, then follows with a right hand that splits the roofer's eyebrow open. Blood runs into the roofer's eye, and he never sees the next punch coming.

I ring the bell. The roofer stays on his knees with his forehead on the canvas.

Dutch's redhead won. Dutch collects his winnings from Ozzie without a word to me.

Midway through the card, a kid named Wiley, who hauls hay for the feed store, goes in against a ranch hand from Harper. Wiley has fought for me a handful of times, and he's never once been worth the money Dutch lays on him right before the bell.

Late in the fight, Wiley drops the ranch hand with a right hand to the temple. The ranch hand goes down on his back and doesn't get his arms up.

Wiley gets on top of him and keeps hitting him.

I ring the bell. "Bell rang."

Wiley doesn't stop. The ranch hand's head bounces off the canvas, and blood sprays across the white tape on Wiley's hands.

"Wiley."

He hits him again. Men are pounding on the apron and yelling, and somebody near the back is hollering for blood.

At nineteen, Delilah sat on a hay bale by my back door and watched me go through these ropes to stop two men still swinging after the bell. Every man here expects me to do the same thing now.

The paper Delilah and I signed says I don't touch her on a night I've fought. To me, fighting means hitting somebody or something in anger. Pulling one man off another isn't that, and I won't stand in the dirt while a man gets his face beaten in.

I plant a hand on the apron and go through the ropes.

Wiley draws his fist back again. I catch him by the collar and the back of his belt and haul him up off the ranch hand.

He twists around and swings at my head. I duck under it, hook his ankle, and drive him face down onto the canvas hard enough to knock the wind out of him.

I put my knee in his back and twist his right arm up behind him until he quits kicking.

My right hand is already a fist. I want to put it through his teeth, but I keep it at my side.

"You're done," I tell him. "You hear me? You're done in every barn in the Hill Country."

He's gasping against the canvas, and his eyes cut to the betting table, to Dutch, like he's waiting for somebody there to get him out of this. Dutch doesn't look back at him.

Dutch paid Wiley to do this. He wanted to see what I'd do.

Wiley's corner men climb in. I haul him up by the arm and shove him at them. "Get him out of my barn."

The ranch hand's people are crouched over him. He's spitting blood, but he's moving and breathing.

He took too many shots to the head while he was on his back. I've seen men walk away from that and drop a few hours later.

"Somebody drive him to the emergency room in Fredericksburg," I tell his corner. "Tonight. He doesn't drive himself, and he doesn't go to sleep first."

"Wiley forfeits," I tell the barn. "He doesn't fight on my card again, and I'll make sure nobody else books him. Ozzie, pay the other side."

I duck back out through the ropes. The barn is so quiet I can hear the generator out in the cedar.

Somebody near the back yells, "Getting old, Knox?"

A few men laugh, but not many. Every man in this barn has seen me knock a man cold for less than what Wiley did. Tonight they watched me put him on the canvas without throwing a punch.