'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 his 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 bull 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--t 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. 'We'll have no interference here.'
The thugs stared at the shotgun and the man who held it, and hesitated, as well they might.
Captain Mcationelly was not a man who spoke careless ^ws.
'I would advise you,' he said, 'to look about you before any violence is attempted. I am Mcationelly, 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.
Mcationelly 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 taught me. Caffrey shot a left for my face and, going under it, I hit him with a right to the heart, rolling inside of his right. I smashed my left to the ribs, then hooked a right to the head over his left.
The right landed solidly, and Caffrey blinked.
Moving in, I shook him with another right and a left. For a long minute we slugged. I could feel the buzz in my head from his punches, the taste of blood from my split lip. I saw his fist start and brushed it aside, driving my right to his chin inside his left. He backed up, trying to figure it out, but whatever else he was, Caffrey was no thinking fighter. Weaving, I hit him with both hands.
Outside, the air was filled with sound, men were shouting, cheering, crying out with anger. Not with blood lust, but with the excitement of any dramatic thing-- and what could be more dramatic than a fight like this one?
He hit me with a left, but the steam had gone from his punches. I tried a light left, watching for the move I wanted. And it came again, the same too-wide left he had tried only a moment before. Only that time my right caught him coming in. My fist struck solidly on the point of his chin, like the butt of an axe striking a log, and he fell face forward into the dirt.
For a moment there I stood looking down at him.
This was the man whose father and mother had cheated me and robbed me, and who had gone on to riches on the money that should have been spent for my education, the education I'd always wanted. Yet, suddenly, I no longer felt any hatred, all of it washed clean in the trial of battle.
