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Night was coming on when Milk River and I turned into Corkscrew’s crooked street. It was too late for the Canyon House’s dining-room, so we got down in front of the Jew’s shack.
Chick Orr was standing in the Border Palace doorway. He turned his hammered mug to call something over his shoulder. Bardell appeared beside him, looked at me with a question in his eyes, and the pair of them stepped out into the street.
“What result?” Bardell asked.
“No visible ones.”
“You didn’t make the pinch?” Chick Orr demanded, incredulously.
“That’s right. I invited a man to ride back with me, but he said no.”
The ex-pug looked me up and down and spit on the ground at my feet.
“Ain’t you a swell mornin’-glory?” he snarled. “I got a great mind to smack you down, you shine elbow, you!”
“Go ahead,” I invited him. “I don’t mind skinning a knuckle on you.”
His little eyes brightened. Stepping in, he let an open hand go at my face. I took my face out of the way, and turned my back, taking off coat and shoulder-holster.
“Hold these, Milk River. And make the spectators behave while I take this pork-and-beaner for a romp.”
Corkscrew came running as Chick and I faced each other. We were pretty much alike in size and age, but his fat was softer than mine, I thought. He had been a professional. I had battled around a little, but there was no doubt that he had me shaded on smartness. To offset that, his hands were lumpy and battered, while mine weren’t. And he was—or had been—used to gloves, while bare knuckles was more in my line.
Popular belief has it that you can do more damage with bare hands than with gloves, but, as usual, popular belief is wrong. The chief value of gloves is the protection they give your hands. Jawbones are tougher than finger-bones, and after you’ve pasted a tough face for a while with bare knuckles you find your hands aren’t holding up very well, that you can’t get the proper snap into your punches. If you don’t believe me, look up the records. You’ll find that knockouts began to come quicker as soon as the boys in the profession began to pad their fists.
So I figured I hadn’t anything to fear from this Chick Orr—or not a whole lot. I was in better shape, had stronger hands, and wasn’t handicapped with boxing-glove training. I wasn’t altogether right in my calculations.
He crouched, waiting for me to come to him. I went, trying to play the boob, faking a right swing for a lead.
Not so good! He stepped outside instead of in. The left I chucked at him went wide. He rapped me on the cheekbone.
I stopped trying to outsmart him. His left hand played a three-note tune on my face before I could get in to him.
I smacked both hands into his body, and felt happy when the flesh folded softly around them. He got away quicker than I could follow, and shook me up with a sock on the jaw.
He left-handed me some more—in the eye, in the nose. His right scraped my forehead, and I was in again.
Left, right, left, I dug into his middle. He slashed me across the face with forearm and fist, and got clear.
He fed me some more lefts, splitting my lip, spreading my nose, stinging my face from forehead to chin. And when I finally got past that left hand I walked into a right uppercut that came up from his ankle to click on my jaw with a shock that threw me back half a dozen steps.
Keeping after me, he swarmed all over me. The evening air was full of fists. I pushed my feet into the ground and stopped the hurricane with a couple of pokes just above where his shirt ran into his pants.
He copped me with his right again—but not so hard. I laughed at him, remembering that something had clicked in his hand when he landed that uppercut, and plowed into him, hammering at him with both hands.
He got away again—cut me up with his left. I smothered his left arm with my right, hung on to it, and whaled him with my own left, keeping them low. His right banged into me. I let it bang. It was dead.
He nailed me once more before the fight ended—with a high straight left that smoked as it came. I managed to keep my feet under me, and the rest of it wasn’t so bad. He chopped me a lot more, but his steam was gone.
He went down after a while, from an accumulation of punches rather than from any especial one, and couldn’t get up.
His face didn’t have a mark on it that I was responsible for. Mine must have looked as if it had been run through a grinder.
“Maybe I ought to wash up before we eat,” I said to Milk River as I took my coat and gun.
“Hell, yes!” he agreed, staring at my face.
A plump man in a Palm Beach suit got in front of me, taking my attention.
“I am Mr. Turney of the Orilla Colony Company,” he introduced himself. “Am I to understand that you have not made an arrest since you have been here?”
This was the bird who had advertised me! I didn’t like that, and I didn’t like his round, aggressive face.
“Yes,” I confessed.
“There have been two murders in two days,” he ran on, “concerning which you have done nothing, though in each case the evidence seems clear enough. Do you think that is satisfactory? Do you think you are performing the duties for which you were employed?”
I didn’t say anything.
“Let me tell you that it is not at all satisfactory,” he supplied the answers to his own questions. “Neither is it satisfactory that you should have employed this man”—stabbing a plump finger in Milk River’s direction—“who is notoriously one of the most lawless
