Catching his left arm under mine, I threw him off balance and hit him twice in
the belly before I let go. We moved together, punching with both hands, and
outside the ropes the crowd was shouting and brawling. Nothing could be heard
above the din. Deliberately, I still pounded away at his body, but his stomach
and ribs were like rock. He cut a slit above my eye and knocked me into the
ropes, and there someone struck me a stunning blow over the back of the head
with something like a blackjack or sandbag.
Even as I fell, Caffrey rushed at me and struck me twice in the face. I fell
forward, and was scarcely conscious as the Tinker and Doc dragged me to my
corner. Yet when the bell rang I was on my feet.
Now he started after me, and, still feeling the effects of the blow over the
head, I could not get myself together. My punches were poorly timed and lacked
force, and Caffrey rushed at me, pounding away with both hands. Getting in
close, I seized him bodily, lifted him clear of the ground, and slammed him down
with such force that the wind was knocked from him.
“The one in the checked suit,” Doc whispered, “he’s the one who sapped you.”
Glancing across the ring, I saw him there, a broad-faced man with coarse
features, who was wearing a black hat.
Caffrey was wary of me now, and we circled a bit, and I backed him slowly toward
the man in the checked suit. That man, I noticed, had his right hand out of
sight under his coat. Near the ropes I moved in, feinted, ducked a left, and
landed a right under the heart, pushing him back into the ropes. Smashing
another blow to the belly, I deliberately pushed him against the ropes so the
men crowded there must give way, then I struck hard at bis head, but off aim
just enough for the blow to miss, which it did.
It missed him, but it caught the man in the checked suit on his red, bulbous
nose and smashed it, sending a shower of blood over him as he fell.
We slugged in mid-ring then, slugged brutally, taking no time, just punching
away. The things that the Tinker had taught me were coming back now. I stabbed a
straight left to the mouth, then crossed my right to his chin. He hit me with a
solid right and I staggered, but as he closed in I clinched, caught his right
elbow in my left hand, and my right arm went around his body. Then I turned my
hip against him and hurled him heavily to the dirt
He was slow getting up, and suddenly I felt better. There was a cut over my eye,
a welt on my cheekbone I could scarcely see over, and my lip had been split, but
I felt better. I had my second wind, and suddenly all the old feeling against
the Caffreys was welling up inside me. They had robbed me and enslaved me, they
had treated me cruelly when there was no chance to fight back. Now we would see.
When time was called I went out fast. I feinted and hit him with a solid right
on the jaw. His knees buckled, so I moved in fast to catch him before he could
fall and pull him into the ropes. If he went down he would have rest and might
recover. Men tried to push him off the ropes so he could fall, but I held him
there and hit him with both hands in the face with all the power I had.
When he started to fall away from the ropes I caught him with another punch, and
then he did fall. Turning back to my corner, my eyes momentarily caught a flash
of light. Involuntarily I ducked, but there was nothing. Glancing at the empty
window, I found it still empty.
The gamblers were pushing hard on the ropes, and Sheriff Walton shouted at them
to hold back, but they were pushing as a mass and there was no one he could
single out for a shot, and he was not the man to fire blindly into a crowd.
When we came together again in the center of the ring, I said, “Dun Caffrey, you
and your folks robbed me, now I shall have a little of my own back.”
He cursed me, and beat me to the punch with a left that jolted me. There was
power in the man. He was a fighter—I’ll give him that.
The crowd was shouting wildly, their faces red with fury at me. They had not
expected me to last so long, yet here I was, in danger of beating their man.
Sweat trickled into my eye and the salt stung, and, momentarily blinded, I
failed to see the right with which he knocked me into the ropes. Now it was he
who held me there, and as he battered at me with both fists, several men pounded
the back of my head and my kidneys from beyond the ropes. Had they left it to
one man he might have done me serious injury, but so eager were they, and most
of them drinking, that they interfered with one another.
I got my head down against his chest and again the great strength of me helped,
for I bulled him away from the ropes and into the center of the ring. As we
broke apart, each ready for a blow, sunlight flashed again in my eyes—sunlight
reflected from a rifle barrel. In the window which until now had seemed empty, a
man was aiming a rifle at me.
Wildly, I threw a punch at Caffrey, deliberately throwing myself forward and off
balance so that I fell to the ground, but even as I fell I heard the whap of a
rifle bullet as it whipped past me, and then I was on my hands and knees in the
dirt and all about me there was silence.
Looking up, I saw the crowd drawing back. Slumped against a ring post was a man
with a round blue hole over one eye and the back of his head blown away.
In that instant, the Bishop, never one to miss a chance, sprang into the ring
holding up a watch and claiming I had been off my feet for the count of ten—that
I had lost, I had been knocked out.
“No!” Walton shouted, and drawing his own gun, he said, “the fight will
continue. May the best man win.”
The thugs and gamblers crowded back again toward the ring, shouting angrily that
the fight was ended, but before they could reach the ropes, a horse vaulted over
them and a man with a shotgun sat in the saddle.
“Stand back from the ropes!” His voice seemed not to be lifted above a
conversational tone, but it had the ring of authority. “Well have no
interference here.”
The thugs stared at the shotgun and the man who held it, and hesitated, as well
they might. Captain McNelly was not a man who spoke careless words.
“I would advise you,” he said, “to look about you before any violence is
attempted. I am McNelly, and the men you see are my company of Rangers. We will
see fair play here, and no violence outside the ring.”
Their heads turned slowly, unwilling to believe what they saw, but thirty
mounted and armed men are a convincing sight, and I confess, it was pleased I
was to see them.
McNelly spoke to his horse, which easily lifted itself over the ropes again.
“Sheriff Walton,” he said quietly, “whenever you are ready.”
“Time!” Walton said, and stepped back.
It was a bloody bit of business that remained, for I found no streak of
cowardice in Dun Caffrey. Many things he might have been, but there was courage
in the man. He had had a few minutes of respite, and now he came up to the mark,
fresh as only a well-conditioned veteran can be. For the veteran knows better
how to rate himself, how to make the other man do the work and exert himself;
and Caffrey was prepared to give me a whipping.
But the fighting had served a purpose with me also. No veteran of many fights,
nonetheless I had sparred much with the Tinker and he had shown me many things,
and practiced me in their doing, and the fight thus far had served to bring them
to mind.
So if it was a strong and skilled man I still faced, it was a different one he
faced now.
My muscles were loose now, my body warmed up, and I was sweating nicely under
the hot sun. The rhythm of punching had become more natural to me, and my mind
was working in the old grooves.
As I came in more slowly, my mind was thinking back to what the Tinker had