He was slow getting up, and Massey hit him twice before he could get his hands up. Blood was running into one of his eyes, and his breath was hoarse, but he was on his feet, and moving in. This was an old story to Matt. He had been knocked down before, and he had gotten up. He would keep getting up.
Massey rushed, throwing punches that rocked and smashed, but Matt was no longer worried. He had been hit and hit hard, he had been kicked at least a dozen times, and he was on his feet again. He was no longer punch shy as a man often is before he has been hurt. He moved in, his skill reasserting itself, his strength coming back. The vitality built through many years of hard living on the plains and in the mountains was with him now. He bowed his head and walked in, and suddenly, he began to rip short, wicked punches to Clive Massey’s stomach.
Massey was the bigger man, and he was a strong man, and smart in the ways of fighting, but Matt Bardoul kept weaving and smashing and he kept moving in. His face a smear of blood from a cut eye and a smashed lip, battered and swollen, he moved in. He was making a few of them miss now, and through the bloody haze of his sight he could see the moving body of Massey ahead of him.
He feinted suddenly, and lashed out with a right. Massey caught it coming in, and it shook him to his boots. Watching his face, Matt knew the punch hurt, and moreover he knew that it did something to Clive Massey. This man had been down, and down again, he had been punched and booted, but he could still throw a punch like that.
Clive’s left lashed out, but Matt’s head moved. He uppercut to the chin, slammed both hands in short wicked hooks to the jaw, and then cut Massey’s cheek to the bone with an overhand right.
Blood streaming down his handsome face, Clive Massey began to fight like a man in a panic, but he was gone now. Actually, he had lost the fight with that first hard punch Matt had thrown, but he only knew this man must go down and stay down, but he would not. Matt bulled his way in close, hooking those short, wicked punches to the bigger man’s stomach, then raking his face with streaking jabs and wicked right crosses. The things Jem Mace had taught him were his now, they were coming back, and they showed in the straight, hard punches, and the blocking.
There was no mercy in Matt. He saw Clive weakening. Coolly, coldly, he set himself and slammed a right to the body. Massey backed up, and Bardoul walked in, deliberately, he slapped Massey open handed across the mouth, and when Clive lunged in a blaze of rage, Matt spread his legs and threw both hands to the body. Clive grunted, and his mouth dropped open, and Matt broke his nose with a short right hook, and then split his other cheek with a left.
Massey went down. Matt stood over him, bloody and maddened with fighting lust. He tried to speak but his swollen lips only muffled the words. He grabbed Clive by the collar and jerked him to his feet. Shoving him back against the wagon he hit him again, twice to the body and again to the face.
Clive Massey’s knees sagged, and he crumpled, limp as a rag into the dust.
Turning, his hair hanging over his face, bloody and punch drunk, Matt Bardoul saw through a haze of blood and the fog in his brain, the horror stricken face of Jacquine Coyle.
He tried to straighten up, but there was a stabbing pain in his side, and when he put his hand there, he found his shirt was gone, hanging from his shoulders in a few straggling ribbons.
Somebody put an arm around his shoulders and he walked back to his wagon. He was helped up, and he sprawled in a heap across the piled up goods and his own blankets.
When he opened his eyes again, the wagon was moving. It was hot inside the canvas covered wagon, and he struggled to a sitting position, his head feeling like it weighed a ton. When he moved, a sharp pain stabbed him, and he sat there, staring in blurred half consciousness at the tailboard of the wagon.
He got his canteen which had been put beside him and tried to drink, but his lips were split and swollen and the canteen bumped them painfully, jolted by the moving wagon.
Carefully, as the fog began to leave his brain, he felt all his face. The cut over his eye had been patched, but his cheek bones were swollen until his eyes were almost closed, and his nose and lips were very sore.
He fumbled around and found his gunbelts and buckled them on. Then he crawled to the rear of the wagon and almost fell into the dust. When he tried to move, he did go to his knees, but managed to get up and get to his horse. It was saddled and bridled, so he crawled into the leather and felt better.
The hot sun felt good, and he rode around toward the front of the wagon. Tolliver was driving. The boy looked up, astonished when he saw him. “You better rest,” he suggested, “you took quite a beating.”
Matt stared at him. “I won, didn’t I?”
“Won?” Tolliver chuckled. “I should smile, you won! You damn’ nigh killed him.” He shook his head. “Me, I missed it. Shedd said it was the damnedest fight he ever did see.”
The sun and the air made him feel better, although his face felt stiff and sore.
“Tolliver,” he said suddenly, “what’s your connection with that wagon back there? With Joe and Joe’s brother?”
Tolliver did not reply while the heavy wheels rumbled over twice, then he said, “I reckon my reason won’t interfere none with your wagon train. They are friends of mine, mighty good friends.”
“Did you know the law was looking for Rosanna Cole?”
His head came up sharply. “Don’t know no such person.” Then, inconsistently, he added, “She never done it nohow. She never killed him.”
Matt Bardoul shrugged. He stared down at his swollen hands. If Logan Deane elected to make a fight of it now he could never get a gun in those hands fast enough. Not for Deane.
“Personally,” he said, “I don’t care. They were asking about her at Fort Reno.”
He rode in silence for awhile. “They picked a bad outfit to tie to. This wagon train is headed into a sight of trouble. What happened yesterday is just one phase of it. One of these days things will start happening mighty fast.”
There was no sign of Jacquine. All day he rode around, keeping his eyes open for her. He wanted to talk to her, to explain … but what was there to explain? She had responded to his kisses, she had been with him all the way, and besides, she must know how he felt.
Nor was there any sign of Clive Massey. Matt felt a grim satisfaction in that. No matter what happened now, he had given Massey a taste of his knuckles. The man had been whipped, and very thoroughly. He thought then of the deputy marshal’s commission in his pocket.
What should he do about that? In a way, he was glad to have it, but in yet another way it placed him in a difficult situation. He was accustomed to doing things his own way, to answering to no one.
No one came near him. There was no sign of Reutz. Brian Coyle stayed close to the head of his wagons and did not ride up to join Matt or speak to him. Neither Aaron Stark nor Lute Harless looked at him when he rode by. Anger burned in him, a slow, bitter anger. What was wrong with them? Surely they did not believe that ridiculous story about Sun Boyne?
Or had something been said about his meeting behind the wagon with Jacquine?
Once, far off on the flank, he glanced back. The light wagon drawn by mules was coming right along. Where it had been when the soldiers looked for it, he had no idea. Probably along the river, hidden in the brush or timber.
It was a good day. The country was dry, but they were making good time and headed almost due north. Off on their left was the towering mass of the Big Horns, and at times a refreshing breeze blew down from them. He was lonely and restless. The pain in his side and the soreness of his lips and face did not prevent him from thinking.
There had been enough of this, enough of loneliness, enough of single life. What he wanted now was Jacquine, and his own ranch in the Big Horn Basin. Had it been left up to him he would have turned off to the west and found his own route through, and let them have the Shell or the Rottengrass, wherever the gold might be. He wanted the grass lands and the long valley, and the green of the thick growth along the Big Horn.