Russell, stripping to the waist, belting himself, stood forward.
"Suits me," he said. "Suit me better to cut out all this talk an' get this over with. It won't take long."
He was a formidable-looking adversary. In the moonlight certain signs of puffiness, of dissipation, did not show, save for rolls of fat about shoulders and paunch. He was powerfully built, his chest matted with black hair, his forearms rough with it. Taller than Mormon, he had all the advantage of reach. He sneered openly at his opponent.
"One thing more," said Mormon. "We ain't fightin' fo' a purse. Roarin' knows what we're fightin' fo'. A private matter. But we'll put up a stake, if he's agreeable. Loser leaves the camp."
"When he's able to walk. You slapped my face this morning. This evens it."
Russell lashed out suddenly, his hand open, striking with the heel of his palm for Mormon's jaw. Mormon sprang back, warding off, but it was Pardee who struck aside Russell's blow and sent him reeling back with a powerful shove.
"Strip down," he said to Mormon. "Both of you keep back of your lines till I give the word. Sabe?" He scored two lines in the dirt with the toe of his shoe and waved them behind the marks.
"No rounds to this affairs," he called to the crowd. "Fair fightin', foul holds and punches barred. Everything else goes. Man down allowed ten seconds. That's my ruling," he added to the two men.
Mormon looked clumsy as a bear as he waited for the word. He was far stouter than Russell. His bald pate, with its reddish fringe of hair, looked grotesque under the moon. The bulge of his stomach seemed a strong handicap in agility and wind. Yet his flesh was hard and, where the tan ended on neck and forearms, it held a glisten that caused the knowing ones to nod approvingly. There was strength in his back, big muscles shifted on his shoulders and his arms were bigger than Russell's, if shorter, corded with pack of sinew and muscle. As he toed his line, swaying from side to side, arms apart, the left a little forward, he moved with a lightness strange to his usual tread. Russell crouched a little, his long arms hanging low, knees bent. The two lines were about six feet apart.
They faced each other in a silence of held breath on all sides. Pardee stood to one side, equally between them. His arm went up.
"Ready?" he asked. "Let her go!"
A great sigh went up as the two fighters leaped forward. Both seemed about to clinch, to test their prowess as wrestlers. Murmurs went up from back of Mormon where his fanciers had ranged themselves. "Russell's got too many tricks for him," men told each other and then gasped.
Mormon had landed, light as a dancing master, despite his bulk, had stooped, turned in a flash with his right hand clamped about the right wrist of Russell, bowing his back, heaving with all his might.
Russell, shifting at the last second from a clutch, seeing Mormon charging, swung a vicious uppercut. He made the mistake of underestimating Mormon, thinking him slow-witted. He found his wrist in a vise, his arm twisted, bent down across the thick ridge of the cowman's shoulder, the powerful heave of Mormon's back. His own impetus served against him. Mormon shifted grips, he cupped Russell's elbow with his right palm and crowded all his energy into one dynamic effort of pull and hoist. Russell went over his head in a Flying Mare as the crowd stood up and yelled.
Surprised off his feet, Russell's experience served him in good stead as they left the ground. Mormon's trick had scored, but it was an old one and had its counter-move. As he landed, legs flexed, he twisted, grabbed Mormon's arm with his free one and jerked him forward, hunching a shoulder under the cowman's stomach. The pair of them rolled together on the ground, struggling and clubbing, while the spectators shouted themselves hoarse and smote each other great blows. Pardee, stepping warily, watched the writhing pair.
Russell, wiser at this game, contrived leverage, twisting Mormon, and pinned his arms in a scissors grip while he battered at his face and Mormon writhed to get away from the reach of those long arms. The soft dust clouded about them and their grunts came out from it as they struggled. Once, with Mormon striving to open the leg grip, jerking away from the flailing blows, they rolled perilously near a clump of prickly pear on the verge of their little arena and a universal cry of warning went up.
The two heard nothing of it in their hammer and tongs affair, the superheated blood, stoked by passion, surging through their veins.
Mormon felt the pressure of Russell's thigh-muscles closing relentlessly, clamping down on his chest, shutting off oxygen. His energy waned, his limbs grew heavy, nerveless, his brain clogged and dulled. He set his chin well down into his neck to save his jaw, but his right cheek was pounded, one eye closing. It was only a matter of moments before he must relax and then Russell would pin him down with one arm and send in the final smashing blow. He felt himself suffocating, sinking – the noise of roaring waters dinned in his ears.
He lay on his back, Russell on his side, one leg below, one leg above Mormon's body, bending at the hips in his efforts to reach the cowman's jaw. He bent a fraction too much, the scissors grip shifted imperceptibly and the message of that weakening of the chain flashed to Mormon's hazy brain. With every muscle taut in one supreme convulsion he managed to twist sidewise, back to Russell, opening the grip that now compressed shoulders instead of chest and back. He got a breath of air, dust-laden but blessed. His chest expanded, strength flowed in, he forced his arms apart, rolling over on Russell, crushing him into the soft earth with his weight. Another wriggling twist and he faced his man, bringing his mighty back into play to break clear. He got a forearm across Russell's Adam's apple, regardless of the blows that smashed into his face. He hammered home one jolt hard to the jaw and, as Russell's body grew limp, dragged himself from the relaxing hold and crouched on hands and knees, wheezing, spent, gulping air to his flattened lower lungs that refused to function.
Now he could hear the shouting of the crowd, a clatter of yells. He saw Russell's head move, his eyes opening in the moonlight. Mechanically Mormon stood up, swaying, bruised, one eye useless. Pardee began counting over Russell, according to the ruling he had made.
Russell rolled over on his face. It looked as if he was not going to try to get up. This was not how Mormon had wanted the fight to end, in a technical knockout, with his man beginning to come back and he not allowed to finish him.
Pardee had put in the clause, "Man down allowed ten seconds, with the other on his feet," merely to make a better, longer fight of it from the spectator's standpoint. It was supposed to be the sporting thing to do, but Mormon, blood-flushed, brain-dull, had no thought of ethics at that moment. Russell was lifting himself to knees and elbows, crouching as Mormon had done, watching his opponent, listening to the count. He was going to get up. He was up at nine, stooping, groggy, his long arms hanging low, and a shout went up from his backers as Pardee stepped aside.
Russell began to back away, to describe a half-circle, right forearm across his chest, left arm extended, both in slight motion. Mormon stood like a baited bear, slowly revolving to face Russell, wary of a feint to draw him out. There were smears of blood on Russell's arms, on his face, dark in the moonlight. Mormon's whiter skin showed greater defacement. There was a mouse swelling above his eye, the lids were clamping.
The ring of spectators was almost silent now, leaning forward, watching. Little jerky sentences passed between them.
"Russell's goin' to box." "He can beat the cowman at that game." "Cut him to ribbons. Blind him first."
The man in the crowd was right. Mormon knew little of boxing, but he knew enough to throw a cushion of sturdy arm across his jaw, the left elbow crooked, nose buried in it, eyes – one eye – indomitable above it. And the blunted elbow like a ram, as he ducked and Russell's straight right slid over his bald pate. He was far faster, lighter on his feet than Russell dreamed. The bully still underestimated his man, but woke to vivid and just appraisal as Mormon's elbow smashed against his collar-bone, left forearm clubbing his nose, starting spurts of blood, right fist coming up like a piston in short-armed, jolting upper-cuts.
Desperately Russell clutched, failed; held, clung, half tumbling into a clinch. Mormon's arms were about him, underneath, binding him with hoops of steel, compressing. He lost his footing, began to rise and he back-heeled in an outside click. They both went down together side by side in a dog-fall. Mormon loosed his arms as he rolled atop, got astride of Russell, strove to gather and control the arms that thrashed and smote.
Something jagged crushed against Mormon's temple. It seemed as if the skull split open and a jagged, red-hot probe searched through his brain. He threw up his head in agony, his chin exposed, but instinct still awake to fling out both hands, catch the oncoming blow, his fingers clamping deep about the wrist above the hand that held the rock – some ore fragment tossed away by an old-timer – that Russell had found in the dirt, and used in unfair, murderous intent.
The maddening pain of first impact died to a throb as the blood poured down, seeming to leave his brain clear, cold with a rage that responded to a deep disgust of the bully who was now at his mercy. For, with the rage came absolute conviction that this was the end of the fight.
He screwed unmercifully, flesh and sinews and the small bones of the wrist, until Russell shrieked through his swollen mouth at the anguish of it and dropped the rock. Pardee, hovering near, seeing all, picked it up and slipped it into his pocket as Mormon pinned down Russell's arm with his left knee and swung left and right in sledge-hammer blows to the jaw of the face that tried in vain to dodge the knockout. As if a galvanic current that had simulated life had suddenly been shut off, Roaring Russell's body lost all energy, it seemed to flatten, lay without a quiver.
Mormon got on his feet and stood to one side while Pardee counted off the seconds that were only a grim parody. Russell's brain was short-circuited. There was not even a tremor of his eyelids. Pardee knelt, felt pulse and heart. Then he beckoned to the loser's seconds.
"Come and get your man," he told them. "He's through for this evening."
Pandemonium broke loose as the crowd broke formation and surged down. Four men packed off Roaring Russell, limp and sagging between them. Pardee exhibited the chunk of ore, stained with Mormon's blood, while Sandy, Sam and Westlake ramparted Mormon from enthusiastic admirers and pushed down to the creek where he washed his hurts with the stinging icy water and stiffly put on his clothes.
"Knew he was licked and figured he might get away with it," declared Pardee. "Lucky it didn't split his head open." Murmurs gathered force against the bully's methods.
"Cut out the lynching talk, boys," cried Pardee. "The man's been beaten up. I wouldn't wonder if his jaw was bu'sted. His nose is. Let him go; we'll see that he leaves the camp as soon as he can hobble." He broke through to Mormon, being assisted into his coat by Sandy. "How are you standing up, old bearcat?" asked the referee. "I thought he had you nipped once but you walloped him."
"Me? I'm jest about standin' up, an' that's all," said Mormon, gingerly feeling certain places on his face. "I sure thought it was my brains oozin' when he swiped me with that rock. But my bone's pritty solid in the head, I reckon. I don't mind tellin' you-all I'm feelin' a good deal like a bass drum at the end of a long parade, but I believe it's all on the outside. And I ain't entered for any beauty show – at present."
"Eleven minutes of straight fighting by the watch," said a man.
Mormon looked at him humorously, and one-eyed.
"Seemed mo' like 'leven hours to me." He caught sight of Simpson, holding out a flask. "Now that's what I call a friend," he started, his hand outstretched. Then it dropped and a blank look came over his face.
"Let's git out of this," he murmured to Sandy. "Dern me if I didn't plumb forgit about any chance of her showin' up."
"Here's where you git called a hero," said Sam. "She knows what you've been fightin' erbout. More'n that she's been in the crowd for the last five minnits of the scrap. That right, Westlake?"
"Yes. I saw her come into the crowd with young Ed. She wants to thank you, Mormon. No use dodging it."
Young Ed was maneuverin' through to their side.
"Aunt wants to see you," he announced with a grin. "We heard the row down here, an' she sent me to see what it was. When I didn't hurry back she trailed me. Great snakes, Mormon, but you sure whaled him!"
"Huh!" Mormon said nothing but that mystic monosyllable until they reached the place where Miranda Bailey stood apart from the crowd who deferentially gave her room, whispering her supposed share in the recent event. She did not look much like the heroine of a romance, neither did Mormon resemble a hero. Her somewhat worn but wholesome face was set in forbidding lines, but Westlake and Sandy fancied they saw the ghost of a twinkle in her eyes. She greeted Mormon as if he had been a disgraced schoolboy.
"What have you been fightin' about?" she demanded.
But, like Russell, she underestimated Mormon. His one working eye was innocent of all guile as he looked at her.
"Fightin' fo'? Jest fo' the fun of it, marm."
She surveyed him grimly and then her features softened.
"I reckon yo're too tough to get hurt much," she said. "I can fix up that eye. I sh'ud think a man of yore age 'ud have more sense than fightin' at all in front of a crowd of hoodlums who ought to be asleep, 'stead of disturbin' the whole camp, let alone for sech a ridicklus reason."
"I didn't think the reason ridicklus," said Mormon, and the spinster's lips twitched.
"What he wants is a lancin' an' a chunk of raw beef," put in Simpson, with a sympathetic wink at Mormon that suggested more pungent remedies in the background. "Come up to my place."
There may have been some thought of trade from the many who would want to see the victor at close range. Mormon hesitated, all slowly moving toward the bridge. Men were staring toward the mesa whence came a high-powered car, rushing at high speed, magnificently driven, taking curve and pitch and level with superb judgment. Its lights flamed out on the night. It turned and came on, stopping on the bridge, blocked by the crowd that made slow opening for it. The driver, in chauffeur's livery, sat immobile, controlling the car, his worldly-wise, blasé face like a mask. Two men were in the tonneau. One of them leaned forward, looking at the crowd, a square-jawed man, clean-shaven but for the bristle of a silver mustache beneath an aggressive nose, above a firm hard mouth and determined chin. The mintage of the East was stamped upon his features. He was a man accustomed to sway, if not to lead. His companion was as plainly as eastern product, but his manner was subordinate though his face that, alone of the three, seemed to hold a measure of fearful wonder at the turbulent throng of men, was shrewd enough.
"I'm looking for a man named Plimsoll," said the first of these two, his voice an indication that he was accustomed to a quick answer. "He wired me about some claims. Where'll I find him?" He made no question concerning the crowd, his eyes passed casually over Mormon's damaged countenance, over the procession that bore Russell, sack-fashion. Here was a man who, at any hour of the twenty-four, was primed for business and for profit.
Yet he could not fail but see that his question charged the crowd with some emotion he could not fathom. The night was spent, it was getting close to dawn. The issue between Sandy Bourke and Plimsoll, crowded aside for the moment, was now paramount. Some craned for sight of the two-gun man, others glanced toward the eastern sky. The stars seemed to be losing their brilliance, the golden moon turning silver, the high horizon, jagged with mountain crests, appeared to be gaining form and a third dimension.
"You'll likely find him at his place," answered a miner. "Up-street on the left. Name's outside."
They let the car go on in a lane that was pressed out of their ranks. They fell in behind or alongside of it as it passed slowly up the street. One or two of the bolder got on the running boards unchecked. The easterner who was looking for Plimsoll took in the situation as something beyond his present range, accepting it. Sandy turned to Mormon.
"You better see Miss Mirandy up to her claim," he said, his voice casual enough. Mormon started an appeal but it died unvoiced. The spinster knew nothing of the clash impending between Sandy and the gambler, neither did her nephew, who, the excitement of the fight over, yawned and went off with his aunt and Mormon.
"I'll bring you up that chunk of meat, Mormon," whispered Sam. "An' I'll bring you somethin' stronger, same time."
"Don't bring it all on yore breath," Mormon whispered back. "If I hear any shootin' I'll come back lopin'."
"There won't be any shootin'," said Sam. "You go soak that eye of yores in Mirandy Bailey's sage tea. Me 'n' Sandy, we'll handle Plimsoll." Then Sam broke clear from Mormon and hurried after Sandy and Westlake.
Sandy walked up the street without hurry and, as they had made way from the car, men gave him space. The nearer he got to Plimsoll's place the more room they allowed him. They melted away from the car on all sides, leaving it clearest between the machine and the entrance to the gambling shack. The chauffeur preserved his bored look and carved attitude. His face was lined with lack of sleep and the strain of driving at high speed over unknown mountain roads, powdered gray with dust. He seemed almost an automaton. The man with the square face looked alertly about him at the crowd, giving place to the lean tall man walking leisurely up the street, high lights touching the metal of the two guns that hung in holsters well to the front of his hips. Sandy's face was serene, but there was no mistaking the fact that the star performer of the moment had come upon the stage. Five paces back of him strolled Sam, his eyes dancing with the excitement that did not show in Sandy's steel-gray orbs. Westlake followed to one side, by the advice of Sam.
The stranger saw that Sandy walked lightly, on the balls of his feet, with a springy tread. He appraised his face, frown-lines appeared between his eyebrows and he half rose in his seat. Then the door of the cabin opened and the man who had volunteered to find Plimsoll emerged.
"He's comin' right along," he announced.
It was Plimsoll's way – the professional gambler's way – to play his cards until he knew himself beaten. He had been hoping for the arrival of this man. He represented capital, the development of the camp into a mining town, the movement of money, the boom of quick sales. With his backing – once the camp understood what it meant to all of them – he might turn the tables on Sandy Bourke. The protection of Capital was powerful.
He came out licking his lips nervously, with a swift survey that took in the setting of the stage prepared for his entrance. His eyes, shifting from the big machine, as if drawn by something beyond his will, focused on the figure of Sandy, easy but sinister in its capacity to avoid all melodrama. Half-way between door and car he halted.
"Plimsoll?" said the stranger. "I am Keith."
The light was perceptibly changing. Faces of men came out of the shadows, pale but visible. The lights of the machine changed from yellow to pale lemon, the flares outside the cabins, the illumination of the windows altered. High up, a tiny fleck of cloud caught the fire of the as yet unseen sun, rolling on to dawn behind the range. Things seemed flat, lacking full definition, lacking shadow. In the east the sky showed gray behind the dark purple crests between which mists were trailing. Men shivered, half from cold, half from tension and lack of sleep.
"Plimsoll," said Sandy. "That peak oveh on Sawtooth Range is goin' to catch the light first. I'll call it sun-up when the sun looks oveh the mesa."
Plimsoll bared his teeth in a fox-grin. Sandy stood with his hands by his sides, covering him with his eyes. Plimsoll looked at the hands that he knew could move swifter than he could follow, he looked at the car with Keith gazing from him to Sandy, he sensed the waiting strain of all the men, waiting to see Sandy shoot – if he did not go, to see him crumple up in the dust, and – he looked at the peak on Sawtooth and his face grayed as the granite suddenly flushed with rose. His will melted, he turned and went inside his cabin. No one followed him, there was no one inside to greet him. His heart was filled with helpless rage, centered against Sandy Bourke. He knew the camp was against him, considering him outbluffed or outmatched. His horse, ready saddled, had been at the door since midnight. He mounted, dug spurs into the beast's flanks and went galloping madly up the slope that rose from the street gulch leading down to the main gulch of Flivver Creek. He was shortcutting for the mesa road, hate in his heart, his blood, his brain; poisoning hate that turned all his secretions to gall. His plans for wealth had been blocked by a man he dared not face. Before Sandy Bourke his spirit flinched as a leaf shrinks and curls from flame. The forced acknowledgment of it was an acid aggravation. He raked his horse's flanks with his rowels and the spirited brute, pick of all Plimsoll's horse herd, tore up the hillside to suit the mad humor of his master, who was permeated with the venom of a man who knows his deeds at once evil and futile, a venom that was bound to spread until the infection mastered him, body and mind and soul, steeped them in a devil's brew that permitted of no other thought but what was dominated by the mad desire to get even.
Some one caught sight of the galloping horse and rider lunging along in a cloud of dust that showed golden as the sun rose and looked over the mesa. He raised a shout that was joined in by the rest, that reached the flying Plimsoll as the view-halloo reaches the fox making for its earth.