When Titans Drive/Chapter 6

S Bob toppled forward and lay still, a long, deep, concerted sigh of released tension arose from the spectators, followed by a chorus of admiring commendation. These rough-and-ready river hogs saw nothing unfair in their foreman’s method of fighting. The woods’ rules of combat are simple. “Get your man,” is the principle one. The manner of getting does not count.

“Nice work, Pete!” called one. “Pretty!”

“Good for you, old buck! You put him to sleep fine!”

Schaeffer made no reply to these comments; in fact, it is doubtful if he heard them. His face, torn and bleeding in many places, bore an expression of utter savagery. His cut lips were drawn back over sharp teeth in a bestial snarl. His fists were clenched tightly, and every muscle was tense as he stood glaring down with hate-filled, bloodshot eyes at the body of his fallen opponent.

“You meddling dog!” he snarled viciously, after a momentary silence. “Thought you could lick me, did you? Thought you could put one over on me, you skunk! Well, you got yours, an’ I ain’t done with you yet, not by a long shot!”

He took a single swift step toward the prostrate man. It was plain to every one that he meant to drive that heavy, spiked boot again and again at the helpless body, yet not one of the rivermen uttered a word of protest. A number of faces expressed disapproval, but in the big woods if a man chooses to end a combat in this manner it isn’t etiquette to interfere.

Schaeffer paused beside the prostrate figure for a second or two, as if to prolong his pleasurable anticipation. Then, with a sudden snarl of returning fury, he swiftly drew back one foot.

“Stop!”

The word which came snapping across the circle held in it so much of the essence of command that the riverman obeyed instinctively; obeyed, and then, realizing what he had done, foamed with a fresh fury.

“Why, you copper-colored whelp!” he exploded, glaring darkly at the imperturbable redskin. “Wait! When I get through with this junk here”

He stopped abruptly, and drew his breath with a whistling sound. Joe Moose was moving leisurely toward him, a most efficient-looking revolver pointed casually at the riverman’s stomach. He halted within a few feet of Schaeffer, and stood regarding him with that cool, expressionless stare which was so characteristic. On the ground between them Bainbridge gave a low groan, and moved his head uneasily from side to side.

“Fight not finish,” remarked the Indian blandly, “Bell go clang, like in ring. Heap soon Big Punch get up, start ’nother round. Get me, Steve?”

Schaeffer took an involuntary step backward, his face distorted.

“Somebody get busy an’ put this lunatic out o’ business,” he roared, glaring around at the ring of interested faces. “Bury a lead slug in his worthless carcass where it’ll do the most good.”

The guide was bending over his friend, vigorously chafing one limp hand.

“Better not,” he advised coolly, without raising his eyes. “Joe’s gun go off plenty quick. Hit Pete in bread basket. Make plenty bad hole no cork up.”

His weapon was still aimed directly at the discomfited riverman’s person, and Schaeffer seemed for the moment bereft of ideas for a proper retort. The silence was swiftly broken by a loud guffaw from one of the spectators, to whom the whole affair seemed to appeal as something uncommonly amusing.

“By thunder, boys!” he chuckled. “Hanged if the flea-bitten old cuss ain’t right! The kid’s comin’ around fast. I move we call this the end o’ the first round, an’ let the fight go on. It’ll help pass the time away, if nothin’ else.”

Schaeffer snapped out an angry expostulation, but the Indian’s idea seemed to take with the rough-and-ready crowd. Not one of them thought for an instant that the contest could possibly be drawn out for more than a few minutes longer, or they would, perhaps, not have been so eager. As it was, however, they took the Indian’s part with a rough sort of jocularity which the irritated drive boss knew better than to oppose.

And so when Bainbridge struggled back to consciousness—it had not been a complete knock-out, and he had never, save for the briefest second, been entirely senseless—he found this unexpected condition of affairs.

As his glance flashed past the Indian’s inquiring black eyes, and came to rest on Schaeffer’s sullen, hate-filled face, he made a queer, inarticulate noise in his throat, and tried to scramble up. Moose placed a firm, restraining hand quietly on his chest, and forced him back.

“Take easy,” he whispered. “Plenty time. Big Punch lie still. Get wind.”

Bob was no more anxious for this delay than was his complaining antagonist, but he was forced by Moose to keep his place even to a point when the spectators began to grumble. When at last he was allowed to get on his feet, however, he was more than thankful for the redskin’s wisdom. Even now his legs were not quite steady; the dragging lassitude and weakness which had gripped him were not wholly gone.

It vanished an instant later before that rush of vim and vigor and fierce determination—strange as the second wind which surprises the distressed runner—that suddenly came over him.

He waited Schaeffer’s savage charge instead of meeting it; waited with a cunning pretense of weakly swaying on his heels. But when the riverman was almost on him, he side-stepped neatly, lashing out a stinging right which caught his antagonist on one cheek, and sent him spinning around.

That blow was the beginning of the end. In itself it was nothing, but it marked a vital change in Bainbridge’s method of fighting. Hitherto his work had been clever boxing, to be sure, but just a trifle lacking in that dynamic energy which animated his opponent. The sense of fight convention was so strongly ingrained that, without consciousness of so doing, he was playing according to the rules.

Now, though he lost not a particle of his former skill, he used the defensive part of it less. He did not parry or block or feint so much. His work became more simple, more elemental, and—more deadly. He was out for results now. The hot blood tingled through his veins and flamed into his brain. The crude brute lust for combat gripped him to the exclusion of all else. This man had hurt him cruelly, and humiliated him beyond words. He meant to make him pay, and pay well, for both these injuries. The only difference now between himself and his opponent was that he continued to fight fairly, if ferociously, while Schaeffer did not.

The latter found little opportunity of fouling, however. To his amazement, he discovered that he needed every bit of skill and strength he possessed to keep his feet. Bob bored into him relentlessly, slugging like a pile driver, hammering at his stomach, raining well-directed blows on the heart and kidneys, or varying them now and then with a solid jolt to the jaw.

At first Schaeffer met this extraordinary assault with blind confidence in his ability to wear it out, accompanied by a furious anger at the presumption of the man. But swiftly this mental attitude changed to doubt, nervousness—at length to fear.

It was all so pitilessly indomitable, so machinelike, yet not at all mechanical, that Schaeffer began to grow afraid. He had a yellow streak, of course—men of his stamp usually have—and now it began to come out. His defense grew weaker and more flurried. Bainbridge’s punches struck home with increasing strength and frequency. Once, after a series of swift, smashing blows in the face, Schaeffer staggered back and dropped his guard involuntarily. Bob was following up with a straight body punch, but his cracked and bleeding fist stopped less than an inch, it seemed, from his opponent’s heaving chest.

“Put up your hands, you cur!” he panted harshly. “This fight isn’t over yet. Put ’em up and get busy!”

A second later, having obeyed ineffectually, Schaeffer was flung back into the astonished crowd by a jolt which nearly cracked his jaw.

“Let up on him!” suddenly cried one of the men who had been particularly eager, earlier in the game, in urging Schaeffer to the attack. “He’s had enough, I says. Time to quit an’ have done with it.”

Bainbridge flung back a long lock of black hair with a quick jerk of his head, and glared around the circle with fiercely blazing eyes.

“Is that so?” he jeered. “Who’s running this game? I didn’t hear any talk like that when I was getting the worst of it. You were ready enough to let him do what he liked with me, so keep out of this now while he takes his medicine.”

His glance veered swiftly to Schaeffer’s face, looking like a chalky mask dabbled with crimson, and he thrust his head forward.

“Well?” he sneered. “Scared, are you? I thought you were yellow down at the bottom. Put up your hands!” His voice was hard and cold, and utterly pitiless. “I’m not half done with you yet.”

The man’s exhausted, almost pitiful condition did not move him in the slightest. He thought only of the fellow’s treachery, of the repeated exhibitions of foul play and attempts to maim, and he had no mercy. When the riverman raised his hands in a weak, instinctive attempt at defense, Bainbridge leaped forward and broke his guard by smashing blows on the face.

Schaeffer gasped, cried out in agony and then thrust forward blind, groping hands. He was a picture of utter helplessness, and suddenly the sight of him standing there, with quivering lips and trembling hands, aroused in Bainbridge a bitter disgust—disgust for Schaeffer, for himself, and every one in sight.

He stepped back, his heavy black brows contracted in a frown, and stood for a second sizing up his man, and deciding just what sort of a punch would most quickly end the contest. Like a flash he leaped forward. The blow started almost at Bob’s hip, and held the whole compact mass of him behind it. It doubled Schaeffer like a jackknife, and sent him whirling backward into the arms of his men, a limp, utterly senseless mass.