In the sixth round of his fight with Kid Feltman, the end came. And it
was not at all the end that anybody but Dan Rorke and Keegan, his
manager, looked for.
For the outclassed and battered and wabbling Rorke won.
Two minutes earlier, no one in the Pastime Athletic Club auditorium
would have bet a cancelled lottery ticket on Rorke’s chances. And the
result left the crowd as puzzled as was the raging Feltman himself.
No; Rorke did not see one sweet face in the throng--a face that nerved
him to superhuman effort and victory. Nor did he spur himself to a
Herculean last stand that won him the fight. That was not Dan Rorke’s
way. And most assuredly it was not the way of his manager and mentor,
Red Keegan. The victory was won by subtler and less hackneyed methods.
Here, in brief, was the procedure:
At the end of the fifth round Dan had slumped back to his corner,
dizzy and gone. Red Keegan’s practised eye summed up his condition as
it had summed up his chances during the past two rounds. And he
whispered:
“Time’s come for it, Danny boy! He’s too many for you.”
Danny boy needed no further amplifying of the order. Twenty times in
the gym, under Keegan’s shrewd tutelage, he had rehearsed what now he
was about to do.
Rorke rose sluggishly, groggily, staggeringly, to the summons for the
sixth round. He swayed drunkenly towards the centre of the ring.
Seeing which, the crowd screeched to Feltman to sail in and finish
him. Obligingly, Feltman prepared to obey the behest of his patrons.
He took no chances of a possible trick by laying himself open. But,
with all the zest that could include caution, he went for his
worn-down opponent.
Rorke met the onslaught right gamely. He called on all his waning
strength for one last desperate rally. And the crowd did homage to his
gameness by howling approval.
Feltman was a wise man. He knew this false burst of power could not
last. Sooner than waste himself in fighting back he covered and waited
for the momentary flash to burn out.
But the cheering of the fickle crowd was too much for him. And after
an instant of blocking and retreating he met the pathetically brief
rally, foot to foot.
There was a flurrying exchange of close-quarters blows, Rorke spinning
about so that his back was towards the referee. And, as he spun, Rorke
screamed out in mortal agony. His gloved hands flew heavenward, pawing
the air.
He sank to the canvas floor, doubled up like a jack-knife; his hands
clutching spasmodically at his abdomen some two or three inches below
the belt.
Feltman stepped back in astonishment. He had not struck below the
belt. He could not account for Rorke’s posture of anguish. But for the
fallen man’s face both Feltman and the perplexed referee would have
branded the squirming and groaning antics as a pure fake. But there
was nothing fakelike in the face that twitched above the writhing
body. Rorke’s swarthy visage had gone green white. It had the ghastly
hue of death.
On the instant Red Keegan was leaning over the ropes, shaking his fist
in Feltman’s face, and squalling shrilly:
“_Foul!_ Did y’see that, Mister Referee? Y’saw it! Y’couldn’t miss
seeing it! FOUL! Look at the poor lad, will you? He’s _dying_!”
The referee, Honest Roy Constantin, lived up to the record that had
given him his nickname. Rorke was rolling about the floor in torment.
His face was better indorsement of his condition than would have been
fifty doctors’ certificates. Only by a foul could such agony have been
caused.
Not alone was Rorke’s manager claiming it, but fifty voices from boxes
and bleachers were taking up the yell in the wontedly sheeplike
fashion of fight fans. Honest Roy himself had been behind Rorke at the
moment the blow was struck. But he had seen that Feltman was leading
for the body. And he could deduce the rest.
While Kid Feltman frothed at the mouth with impotent fury, Honest Roy
Constantin thereupon awarded the fight to Rorke--on a flagrant foul.
And the whole thing was done on the strength of Rorke’s facial aspect.
If Constantin had chanced to be an actor instead of a poolroom czar he
would never have been taken in by so simple a trick. For even in those
days it was a common ruse on the stage.
Dan Rorke, at the outset of the round, had drawn in a deep breath; and
he had held it. This, together with his wild exertions, had turned his
complexion to a purple red. Then, suddenly, as he fell, he had relaxed
his muscles and his breath; and had at once taken another breath and
had rolled his eyes upward. The receding blood had left his face a
chalky green. Long rehearsed acting had done the rest. After that
first frenzied glare at the referee he had let his head droop and had
hidden his slowly incarnadining cheeks from further view. The one
glimpse of his corpse-like face was enough for Honest Roy.
“You see, Danny,” apologised Keegan, when he had half carried his
principal to the dressing room, “it was the only way out. We either
misjudged that Feltman bird wrong or else we overplayed the big
improvement you’ve been making these past few months. One or the
other. It don’t matter which. The way it lays, you ain’t good
enough--not yet--to go up against a top-notcher like him. I seen that
before you’d been in the ring two rounds. He was a-eating you up. It
was either pull the good old foul claim or stand for a knock-out. I
didn’t dast give you the office for any funny business. Not with
Honest Roy refereeing. He’s a crank on square fighting, Roy Constantin
is. He’d ‘a’ spotted any of our best ones. So I had to frame it, other
way round. But it was a close call, at that!”
When Red Keegan picked Dan Rorke out of the night-shift puddler crew
at the Pitvale Steel Works he did so after a long psychological study.
This study dealt much with the young middleweight’s rugged strength
and gameness and his natural skill as a fighter. But it concerned
itself equally with Rorke’s innate gifts for more subtle things; among
the rest, a certain crude ability for acting. Then he had moulded the
ignorant boy according to his own wily plans.
As a man, Keegan was not a marked success. As a crooked diplomatist,
he had sparks of genius. Too fragile and too timid to hit a blow
himself, he was a born ring general. And it was his joy and his talent
to study out more foul tactics than occur to the normal fighter’s
bovine brain in the course of a life-time.
None of these manœuvres came under the head of “rough stuff” or
even of “coarse work.” There was a finesse to them all. They could be
pulled--rightly learned by the right man--under the very nose of the
average referee.
Not once, but six times, had Dan Rorke gone into the ring, coached by
Keegan, and bested men who were his superiors. He had done it by a
succession of crafty and murderous fouls, which the referee failed to
bring home to him.
Twice, by unobtrusive butting, in the course of a clinch, he had
ripened his half-stunned antagonist for an easy knock-out. Again, he
had driven his specially shod heel down on the instep of Spider Boyce
with such scientific force as to make the sufferer drop his guard long
enough to let in a haymaker to the jaw. Surreptitious kneeing was
another of his arts.
All these tricks seem broad and obvious in the telling. So would a
full description of the method whereby a conjurer hauls a kicking
rabbit out of an empty hat. It is all in the way it is done. And,
thanks to Red Keegan’s tireless rehearsing and to his own peculiar
talents, Rorke did it in a way to defy casual detection.
When an overkeen referee happened to be the third man in the ring
there were other tactics to fall back on. In such event and with a too
formidable opponent, there were still divers means for wooing
victory--the claim of foul and the white-faced anguish, for example.
Twice before, in other sections of the fight map, had Rorke and Keegan
worked this bit of acting.
As a result Dan Rorke was rising fairly fast in his profession. He was
not of championship timber. He would never develop into such a
contender; nor does one real-life fighter in fifty. But he was good
enough to do all manner of things to dozens of fairly good men in the
rank and file of the middleweight army. And the dollars were drifting
in.
To Dan Rorke himself--fresh from the puddling gang, and seeing the
fight game only through Red Keegan’s gimlet eyes--there was nothing
wrong or even doubtful in his own methods. He took his orders from
Keegan; and his share of the cash profits. He did not bother his thick
head about ethics.
It was a week after the Rorke-Feltman battle, and while Kid Feltman
was still making the sporting world ring with his cries of trickery
and his clamour for a return match. Rorke and his manager had gone
back to their home town of Pitvale; not only for a needed rest, but to
let certain unjust and cruel accusations blow over. Rorke, some months
earlier, had been installed in the biggest room of the manager’s
Pitvale bungalow; and had settled thus in the first semblance of a
home he had ever known since his graduation from the orphan asylum,
twelve years agone. Behind the bungalow was the rickety barn which
served as his training quarters.
Dan’s old fellow toilers of the Pitvale Steel Works had bet loyally on
their former associate in his fight with the redoubtable Feltman. Even
though their paladin had won on a foul, still he had won, and they had
cashed in on their bets. Gratitude welled high in their souls. And it
took a practical form.
On the morning of the eighth day after the match, a delegation of five
puddlers invaded the Keegan bungalow at breakfast time; escorting
among them a big young collie dog, gold and white in hue, classic in
outline, kingly in bearing.
The pup had belonged to the foreman of the night shift, who was taking
a job somewhere out West and could not carry his pet along. So the
boys had bought him cheap; and now presented him in due and ancient
form to Dan Rorke, as a pledge of their hero worship.
In all his twenty-four years Rorke never before had had a dog of his
very own. Such luxuries had not been encouraged at the orphan asylum,
nor at any of the steel-works boarding houses where he had since
lived.
Now, at sight of the splendid beast, the friendship of a normal man
for a good dog woke within him. In spite of Keegan’s sour protests,
the pup was installed in the bungalow as a permanent member of the
household. In honour of the champion who just then was the idol of
Rorke’s profession, the newcomer received the historic name of “Jeff.”
An instant and perfect liking sprang up between Jeff and his
middleweight master. From the first the two were inseparable. For some
reason best known to himself, the young collie accepted the fighter as
his one and eternal lord; and lavished on him a single-hearted
devotion he had never granted to his former uninterested owner.
To Rorke the dog was a revelation. His starved heart went out to the
collie’s staunch friendliness. His sluggish imagination was stirred to
unguessed depths by the dog’s flashes of cleverness and of gay
loyalty. His vanity--and something deeper--was touched to the quick
by the deathless worship in his pet’s eyes.
If Dan Rorke strayed through the town, for the sake of giving the
Pitvalians the privilege of gazing on their foremost citizen, Jeff was
always trotting gravely at his side. If he suppled his hard muscles by
a ten-mile hike through woodland and over mountain, the collie’s
plumed tail was ever just ahead, as pacemaker for the trip.
At meals Jeff stretched himself out on the floor beside Rorke’s chair,
scorning to beg, but eagerly receptive of such food bits as were
tossed to him. At night the dog slept outside Rorke’s door, a keenly
alert sentinel over his master’s rest.
Once, down on Main Street, a Rorke fan swatted the fighter
applaudingly on the back. In practically the same instant the swatter
was on his own back in the street, with Jeff’s teeth menacing him. The
collie had misunderstood the motive of the blow, and, after the manner
of his kind, had sprung to his demigod’s defence.
This sealed once and forever Rorke’s love for Jeff. The dog had risked
dire punishment to ward off a fancied danger from him. It was
wonderful--tremendous! Dan told of it, for the next six weeks,
whenever he could find anyone to listen to his marvellous yarn. And he
added so many unconscious details in the repeated telling that late
comers in the succession of listeners were left with a vague
impression that Jeff had beaten off fully a dozen armed men who had
assailed the fighter.
Keegan used to groan in spirit whenever Dan pointed out Jeff to some
chance caller and began the oft-told saga. One dog man earned Rorke’s
lifelong hatred and the many-adjectived appellation of liar by his
tactlessness in saying:
“Why, most any good purp will do as much as that; if he thinks
someone’s trying to hurt the feller that owns him.”
Dan Rorke was calmly certain that no other dog on earth would have had
the pluck and the loyalty to do it. And gradually Jeff became to him a
sort of fetish for everything that was noblest. Which perhaps was
quite as natural as that a high-bred collie should deem Dan Rorke
worthy of adoration.
On a slippery and slushy morning in early spring, some six months
after dog and man formed their lifepartnership, Dan started through a
corner of Pitvale for his daily hike. He had just won a foul-incrusted
battle and had not yet signed up for another. In the interval before
hard training should set in, he was keeping in shape by means of these
daily tramps and by a little gym work.
He and Jeff came abreast of Vining’s livery stable, and were about to
swing past it when out through the open doorway flashed something
tawny and big and ponderous. In other words, Vining’s vile-tempered
old mongrel English mastiff had caught scent of the approaching collie
and had dashed forth to do battle with the stranger.
That was a cute trick of Vining’s dog. He was a terror in the
neighbourhood; this huge mastiff with the quarter streak of St.
Bernard and the temper of a sick wildcat. And for years he had
maintained his repute as local bully.
Even now, when age and weight were beginning to slow him down, he
still revelled in the prospect of springing out upon some unwary and
less warlike dog as it passed the stable; and doing his industrious
best to kill it.
As it chanced, this was a street seldom used by Rorke. And Jeff and
the mastiff had never before met. Jeff, mincing along on fastidious
white toes through the slush, close behind his master, had no warning
of the attack. The first hint of danger came when, out of the
ever-watchful corner of his slanting dark eye, he chanced to see the
whizzing brindled bulk bearing down upon him. There was no time to get
out of the way; even had Jeff been of the breed that gets out of the
way when peril shows its shining face. To the average dog, there would
have been no chance to prepare for the impact. But the best type of
collie is not an average dog. In his brain, though never in his heart,
he harks back to his wolf ancestors.
It was this ancient wolf strain, now, that made the sedately pacing
Jeff spin sidewise as though on a pivot; letting the mastiff fly past
him, the flaring jaws missing his head by an inch.
The mastiff whirled, almost in mid-air, and came back to the assault.
But as he charged a second time Jeff was not there. The collie had not
run; he had merely side-stepped. And in the same motion his white
eyetooth scored a deep furrow in the side of the charging foe.
Dan Rorke had swung aloft his walking stick to stop the unequal fight
and rescue his chum, for he had heard of the brindled monster’s
prowess. But at this move from Jeff he let his striking arm drop,
idle, and he sputtered aloud in stark admiration:
“Footwork, b’gee! And countering, too! Lord, but Jim Corbett might ‘a’
been proud of that stunt!”
Again the mastiff was charging in; lurching craftily, to drive his
nimbler foe into the angle of door and wall, and thus to corner him
and render his footwork useless. Jeff saw through the ruse, but he saw
too late to escape.
Now, the collie was a scant eighteen months old. His chest and
shoulders had not yet gained the proportions that would be theirs in
another two years. Moreover, this was his first battle. Left to
himself, he would never have sought trouble; for he was a friendly and
frolicsome youngster who had met with nothing but kindliness in all
his brief life.
But his every muscle and joint was as lithe as oiled whipcord. There
was not a fleck of loose flesh on his wiry sixty-six-pound body. And
behind his conscious brain burned not only the battle prowess but the
uncanny shrewdness of his ancient vulpine forbears.
Back in the wilderness days, the wolf that could not hold his own in
warfare and be ready for all surprises, was the wolf that died
exceeding young and left no progeny. The wolf that won the right to
have descendants was the wolf brave enough and quick-witted enough to
transmit his life-saving traits to those descendants.
All this a thousand years ago; and Dan Rorke’s pet collie was
profiting by it.
When the mastiff charged him Jeff acted on pure instinct. Having shown
his resentment at the effort to chew him up, he was now quite content
to let the quarrel rest where it was. But apparently this dog mountain
who had attacked him would not have it so. In fact, the mastiff had
cornered him. And the only road to safety was to go through a foe
nearly twice as big as himself.
This looked like an impossible task, yet Jeff tackled it. His hind
quarters were wedged between the open door and the street wall. In
front was the mastiff. The big dog was not charging now. No need to
waste speed and rashness on a helplessly cornered victim. Head down,
legs crouched, the mastiff crept on his waiting prey. There was a
hideous menace in the crawlingly savage advance.
Up went Dan Rorke’s stick again. Dan had gripped the weapon by the
ferrule and he was measuring the distance between its clubbed handle
and the giant mongrel’s head. But, as before, he did not strike; for
there was no need.
The mastiff gathered himself for a death spring. But Jeff sprang
without waiting to gather himself. Jeff did not spring aloft, as did
the other. He dived under the rearing forelegs, slashing one of them
to the bone as he sped.
The mastiff snapped murderously at his whizzing foe, as Jeff passed
under him. His ravening teeth closed on nothing but a bunch of golden
ruff hair instead of reaching their goal in the collie’s vertebræ. And
the mouthful of fur was his sole asset from the encounter.
Roaring aloud with rage and with the pain of his flesh wounds, the
mongrel bounded out of the corner and made for his escaped victim.
Now Jeff had fought his way out of the trap at no worse loss than a
bunch of neck hair. The whole world lay before him as an avenue of
retreat. No domestic animal but the greyhound can pass a strong young
collie in a footrace. And assuredly this unwieldy mastiff could never
have hoped to overhaul him.
But a queer change had come to the friendly youngster during that ugly
moment in the corner. He, who had always been on jolly terms with
everyone, had been set upon in unprovoked fashion while he was minding
his own business. He had been threatened with death; for a less clever
dog than Jeff could not have failed to read red murder in the
mastiff’s bloodshot eyes.
More, a wad of his fur had been yanked out in most painful fashion.
And, for the first time in his eighteen pleasant months of life, hot
wrath surged up in the collie’s friendly heart. This giant was not
going to treat him so and get away with it scot-free. The battle yell
of his wolf ancestors burst from Jeff’s furry throat.
As the mastiff turned he faced a wholly different antagonist from the
astonished puppy he had set upon in the corner. Ruff abristle, head
down, snowy fangs glinting from under his upwrithing lip, young Jeff
flew to meet him like a fluffy catapult. And a truly epochal fight was
on.
The mastiff went at his work with veteran ferocity and method, born of
fifty death fights. But he had run up against something unique in his
long experience. Jeff was not there. Or rather, Jeff was everywhere at
once and nowhere in particular. He was in and out and over and under;
never wasting time in seeking for a permanent hold, but nipping,
tearing or slashing, and then striking at almost the same instant for
some totally different part of the mongrel’s big body.
The mastiff reared and thrashed about, ever striving to pin his
eel-like adversary under him; to crush him down by dint of vast
weight; to pinion him while the heavy foam-flecked jaws should find
their death-hold. But Jeff had an annoying fashion of not staying in
any one place long enough to be annihilated. And at every impact his
white teeth were leaving their red mark.
“It’s--it’s Corbett and Sullivan, all over again!” blithered Dan
Rorke, his expert eye following each move, his soul afire with
prideful ecstasy at his untried chum’s marvellous war genius. “Will
you look at that footwork!” he exhorted high heaven and the
fast-gathering knot of spectators.
Then his triumph song became a grunt.
The mastiff, in one of his mad lunges, had found his mark. His jaws
closed on Jeff’s furpadded shoulder; and he hung on. With one wrench
of his bull head he bore the slighter dog to earth and began to grind
his jaws into the shoulder he had seized.
For a moment Jeff writhed and flung himself about impotently in the
fearsome grip. In that instant of futile heaving his eyes sought and
met Rorke’s. And in the flashing gaze there was no tinge of fear or of
appeal. It was as though he tried to assure the man that he had fought
his best and that he was sorry he could do no better.
But before Dan’s stick could go up there was a new flurry of fur and
flesh, and Jeff’s sharp teeth had sunk in agonising style deep into
one of the mongrel’s thick pads. The pain was so sudden and acute that
the mastiff loosed his merciless shoulder grip, to lunge for the
collie’s head. And in that brief instant Jeff was not only on his feet
and free, but was back at the assault with all his primal zest.
The mastiff, bleeding and almost breathless, reared for another
attack. His cut hind foot clawed at a film of ice on the slippery
pavement. He lost his balance and fell floundering on his back in the
slush. For a second he lay there, stunned, for his head had hit the
edge of the open door as he fell, and his brindled throat was exposed
and defenceless.
“Now’s your chance, Jeff!” chortled Rorke deliriously. “_Finish_ him!”
But the collie did not take the chance. As the mongrel tumbled
backward, Jeff had darted in at him. But, when he saw the huge brute
prone and helpless on the ground, the collie for some innate
sportsmanly reason forbore to fly at the inviting throat and rip out
the jugular.
Instead, looking down in grave wonder at the sprawling and kicking
mastiff, Jeff took a step backward and stood, ears cocked, head on one
side, slender body still braced for action, waiting for the fallen dog
to rise.
Dan gasped. Then he swore aloud.
The worn-out mongrel staggered to his feet, all the fight knocked out
of him by the stunning head blow and by loss of blood. Jeff danced
forward afresh to the fray. But, tail between legs, the mastiff turned
and limped off into the stable. His back and the slipping hind legs
offered rare chance for the victor to clinch his hard-won conquest.
But Jeff only stared in mild interest after his beaten enemy. Then,
limping a bit from his shoulder wound and panting fast from his fierce
exertions, he trotted over to Dan Rorke and thrust his wet muzzle into
his master’s hand as if in quest of sympathy or praise.
He got both.
Fairly crowing with exultation Dan dropped his stick and flung both
arms about his scarred pet in a breath-taking bear hug.
“Gee, but you’re the real thing, Jeffie!” he carolled, fondling the
inordinately happy dog. “Of all the pups that ever happened
you’re--you’re that pup! Say”--appealing to the crowd--“did you birds
ever see the like of this feller’s footwork? Did you? And did you see
how he wouldn’t pitch into that big stiff when he was down and out?
Some white man, I’ll say! Come on home, Jeff! That shoulder of yourn
will stand some patching. C’mon, Champ! Gee, but I sure named you
after the right man! There ain’t anything double your weight can lay a
glove on you!”
Red Keegan pattered home excitedly from a morning visit to the Pitvale
Hotel. In his hand he was brandishing a telegram that had been
received at the hotel telegraph desk while he was there. He made his
way on hurrying feet to the barn back of the bungalow, which served
his fighters as a gym, and where, at this time of day, Rorke was
reasonably certain to be dawdling with the punching bag.
He came upon Dan, kneeling beside his collie and washing out lovingly
a deeply ragged cut in the dog’s right shoulder. At sight of the
manager Rorke broke forth into a gleeful recital of the bout between
Jeff and the mastiff. But he had scarcely gotten through the first
sentence when Keegan cut him short.
“That c’n wait!” decreed the manager, waving the telegram. “This
can’t. Listen! I’ve cinched Feltman, at last. For right here in
Pitvale. Main bout for the Athaletic Carn’val, next month. Four
thousand dollars! Biggest purse ever! Those carn’val guys don’t seem
to care how they spend it. And they count on your being a star
attraction, here in Pitvale. Remember we figgered they’d do that.”
“Uh-huh,” assented Rorke, unimpressed. “But say, Red, you’d ought to
‘a’ seen the way Jeff lit into him, after he’d fought his way out of
that corner! He----”
“Shut up!” commanded Keegan, with the exquisite courtesy of his kind.
“Here we’re landing the biggest thing we’ve ever pulled off, and you
go gassing ’bout a measly dog fight! I tell you----”
“Well,” retorted Dan, nettled at his manager’s tone and still more at
his total dearth of appreciation for Jeff, “I don’t see as there’s
anything to put on a silk shirt for, in the bunch of news you’ve
lugged home with you. When I fought Feltman, back in August, you and
Bud Curly would ‘a’ had to carry me out’n the ring, heels forward, if
we hadn’t been able to swing that white-in-the-face claim of foul.
I’ve gone ahead some since then, I know that, but I don’t figger I’ve
gone ahead far enough to stop Kid Feltman. And we can’t try the same
white-face stunt a second time on him. He’ll be watching for it. So
will the ref’ree, whoever he is. You act like you’d brang home a gold
mine, Red. Looks to me like you’d carted back a hornets’ nest. How’s
the purse going to be split? A lad like Feltman’ll want to----”
“Danny,” interposed Keegan with weary scorn, “you talk even
foolisher’n you look. And you look foolisher’n any other man the Lord
ever bothered to pin a face onto. I told you, a month ago, the way I
was aiming to work this thing. If you’ve got more int’rest in how
you’re bandaging that cur’s shoulder than in the way we’re due to make
a killing, there’s no use going over it all again to you. I remember,
last time, you were so busy teaching Jeff to speak for bones that you
didn’t more’n half listen to me. And now I s’pose I got to say it all
over again.”
He sighed. It was the sigh of a martyr. But Dan did not answer. With
worried tenderness he was twining about Jeff’s hurt shoulder a festoon
of witch-hazel-soaked bandage. With patience--an ostentatious and
grunt-punctuated patience--Keegan waited until the first-aid task was
ended and the bandaged collie was curled up at his master’s feet. Then
he spoke.
“Feltman’s been after that return fight with us,” he began with
laboured detail and as if talking to a mental defective, “till he’s
got so he’d pretty near be willing to get into the ring with you
blindfold and with both hands tied behind him. Maybe you know that, if
you know anything. Which you don’t. He’s itching to square himself for
that won-on-foul of ours. And I’ve been letting him itch, till he
wouldn’t gag on terms. But, at that, it’s a miracle we’ve landed him.
Anyone with a grain of sense ought to see through it.
“First, I juggle the carn’val crowd into making him and his manager
stand for Sol Kampfmuller as ref’ree. If there’s anything Sol knows
less about than ref’reeing a fight I’d like to know what it is. Being
sporting ed’tor of the _Chronicle_ here, he thinks he knows it all,
and that what he don’t know he suspects. I’ve seen him ref’ree two
fights. Why, that poor Ocity wouldn’t know a foul if it was printed
out for him on a raised map! Anyone could get by with murder, with him
as ref’ree. It’s ’most a shame to try the real classy stunts on him.
Any raw work’d do.
“Feltman’s nearer a top-notcher than ever you’ll get to be in fifty
years, but he’s a numbwit. You could hit him with an axe in the ring,
before he’d find out he was being fouled. So there’s your
comb’nation--a chucklehead ref’ree and a fair-fighting guy who don’t
know how to watch out for fouls. And then there’s you, who I’ve
learned to be the best lad at slick fouling in the whole business.
“Why, it’s too easy! It’s a crime. You c’n cripple or dizzy him in the
very first round if you’ve a mind to. And as often after that as you
need. Then, keep remembering that four-thousand-dollar purse, with
eighty per cent for the winner. And even a minus-brain like yours
ought to be able to figger out the answer. We’ll start you training,
to-morrow. I’ve a couple of corking new ones I’ve worked out lately.
One of ’em’s a killer. And both of ’em smooth enough to get past most
any ref’ree, let alone Sol Kampfmuller and that carn’val crowd. We’ll
work ’em out and brush up on a few of the old ones too. So----”
“Funny thing!” spoke up Rorke, his hand on the dog’s head. “Funny
think ’bout Jeffie, here! He had a dandy chance to rip the throat out
of that Vining dog; and he wouldn’t do it, just because the dog was
down and couldn’t help himself! What d’you think of that, Red? Just
because the other dog was down. No ref’ree to penalise him for
fouling, either. He just stepped back, kind of polite like, and----”
“For the love of Mike!” groaned the irate manager, “will you stop
jawing about that bum cur and----”
“Then,” pursued Rorke serenely, “when Vining’s dog turned tail and
sneaked away, Jeff had the chance of his life to tear in and do all
sorts of damage. But he didn’t. Wouldn’t fight foul--the grand little
cuss!”
Rorke fell silent. The manager stared at him in lofty and wordless
contempt, but Dan did not see him. Still patting Jeff’s head aimlessly
and brooding over the couchant dog with puckered half-shut eyes, he
sat there. Dan Rorke was thinking; and thought, to him, was as
difficult as it was rare. Presently he spoke again--in a rumbling,
ruminating mutter.
“Wouldn’t fight foul, Jeff wouldn’t,” he repeated. “Fought like a
bearcat, so long as the scrap was even. But not a foul stunt from
first to last. Wouldn’t win on a foul. He couldn’t tell but what that
big mutt would get up and tear him in half, like he’d just come plenty
close to doing. But Jeff wouldn’t tackle him while he was down.
Wouldn’t----”
“Say!” put in Keegan. “I’m going to the house to write a letter and
then send off a wire. Keep right on talking, please, all the while I’m
gone. Keep on telling about that dog fight. Then, by the time I get
back, maybe the most of it will have got out’n your system and you
can think of real things again. So long.”
Dan Rorke did not obey his manager’s elephantinely sarcastic request
to go on talking of the dog fight in Keegan’s half-hour absence. But
he did the next thing--he went on thinking about it. At least his
wontedly sluggish thoughts fixed themselves on one detail of the fray,
clinging to it like leeches and sending forth ramifications into the
far and unused recesses of his brain.
These thoughts were not put into words. But their gist may be
translated roughly into English, somewhat as follows:
Jeff had fought without training or precept. He had followed his own
instincts. He had fought according to his nature. Thus, he had fought
fair. He had fought clean. Not only had he disdained to make use of
any crooked advantage, but he had risked defeat and possible death
sooner than to foul.
Jeff was a dog.
Dan Rorke was a man.
How did Dan Rorke win his fights? Three out of four of them he won by
clever fouling. He fought crooked. That was how he made his living--by
tactics his own dog would not stoop to.
The collie looked on Dan as the greatest person under the sun. Yet the
dog fought square and Dan fought foul. What was the answer?
It was a joke in fistic circles that Dan Rorke was the dirtiest
fighter in that section of America; and that he managed to get away
with it by sheer craftiness.
Dan had felt--still felt--a thrill of admiration for Jeff for fighting
so fair. Wasn’t it possible that the fight public might give that same
sort of admiration to a man who was known to fight fair? Going a
tottering mental step farther, wasn’t it just barely possible that all
reg’lar folks had that same little thrill of admiration for a fellow
who was on the level in everything? It was a funny idea, of course,
but----
Then again it was great to have someone, even a dog, look up to
anybody as Jeff looked up to his master; and to think that master was
the best man alive. What sort of mangy hypocrite was Dan Rorke to make
his living crookedly, by super-fouling, while Jeff thought he was a
saint?
The dog fought clean. The man fought dirty. Was the man lower than the
dog? It was a rotten thought. But it had a whole lot of sense to it.
If Jeff, here, could risk death sooner than fight foul, what was the
reason why Dan Rorke----
At this point in the argument Dan stopped and started all over, from
the beginning. He was on the third complete review of it when Red
Keegan came bustling back.
“Well,” queried the manager briskly, “have you told yourself enough
about the dog fight, so’s you c’n remember it a while without telling
it again?”
“I--I guess so,” mumbled Dan uncertainly.
And he made excuse to get out of the way. He was still thinking;
thinking hard and with a growing unhappiness. His thoughts were not
yet crystallisable into words.
But next morning, after a night of less continuous slumber than he
could recall in many a year, he dressed and started down to breakfast
with a brand-new and granite-hard resolve in his tired mind. For once
in his life he had solved a problem--had solved it all himself.
As he opened the door of his bedroom Jeff leaped eagerly up from his
nightly vigil post across the outer threshold. Stiff as he was from
his shoulder hurt, the dog gambolled gleefully round his master,
patting at Dan’s knees with his flying white paws, wriggling himself
into an ecstatic interrogation mark, and whimpering with delight at
the wonderful fact that his adored demigod was once more with him
after ten whole hours of absence.
Thus, the world over, do the average run of collies give morning
salute to the man or woman they have accepted as their deity. And, as
ever, the greeting warmed Dan Rorke’s long-loveless heart. He stooped
over and patted the silken head.
The collie growled in horrific menace and caught Dan’s big hand
between his mighty jaws as if to crush it. But the jaws did not exert
the pressure of a fraction of an ounce on the firm flesh they had so
playfully imprisoned. And the throaty growls were belied by a furious
wagging of the plumed tail.
This was Jeff’s favourite game with his master. With no one else would
he deign to play.
Dan rumpled the dog’s soft ears, and looked with a queer new timidity
into the deep-set dark eyes of his chum. At the unquestioning joyous
devotion he saw there, he felt a tiny twinge of relief. Something he
had let himself fear, in the long night’s meditations, had not yet
begun to happen. There was still time, plenty of time.
And, his resolve firmer than ever, he ran down to the breakfast room,
where Red Keegan was already seating himself at the table.
“_Chron’cle’s_ got a spread on your match with Feltman!” was the
manager’s morning salutation. “First page; and again, under
Kampfmuller’s sign’ture, on the sporting page. We’ve got a good start,
all right. Now----”
“If it isn’t too late,” said Dan hesitantly, “I kind of wish you’d
cancel the match. I don’t honest think I c’n stop Kid Feltman; for all
you say I’ve gone ahead this half year. And it’s more’n an even bet he
c’n stop me inside the limit. So I’ve been thinking it over, and I
guess you’d best call it off; or get ’em to subst’toot some easier guy
than Felt----”
“Good Lord!” snorted Keegan. “Do you set there and tell me you don’t
even remember from yesterday the layout for that fight? Of all
the----”
“Yep,” answered Rorke, sullenly playing with his food and glancing
down for encouragement at the collie lying on the floor beside him.
“Yep. I remember it all right, all right, Red. I remember it. But it
won’t work. That’s why I----”
“Won’t _work_?” thundered Keegan, glaring across at his embarrassed
star. “Why the blue hell won’t it work? It’s the prettiest set-up
we’ve ever handled. There ain’t a flaw to it. Won’t work, hey? Why
the----”
“Because,” replied Dan sheepishly, yet firm as stone, as he glowered
back at his manager, “because that set-up of yours calls for a heap of
fancy fouling. And--and I’m--I’m off fouling. Off it for keeps.
That’s----”
Red Keegan broke in on the halting announcement with a sound that a
turkey might have produced had its tail feathers been pulled violently
at the moment it chanced to be gobbling. The result was a noise that
brought Jeff to his feet with a jump; his tulip ears cocked, his eyes
aglow with excited inquiry; a series of staccato barks racketing from
his furry throat.
“Lay down, Jeffie!” ordered Dan. “He ain’t going to bite me. He’s
only----”
“Are you plumb crazy, Dan?” sputtered the manager. “Or is it a bum
little joke? Off fouling, hey? What’s going to keep you from the
hungry house if----”
“If clean scrapping won’t keep me fed,” answered Rorke, “I’ll go get
back my job in the puddling gang. Anyhow, it goes like I said. I’m off
fouling. Now go ahead and swear!”
But Red Keegan did not go ahead and swear. Profanity was a very
present help to the nerves, in the event of stepping on a tack or
mashing one’s thumb with a hammer or on hearing that one’s wife had
eloped. But this matter lay too deep for swearing.
Blusteringly, then flatteringly, then coaxingly and at last with the
tremolo stop pulled far out, he pleaded with Dan. He painted in
glowing colours the middleweight’s comfortable rise from the ranks and
the golden future that awaited him under Keegan’s guidance, if only he
would have the intelligence to stick to his manager’s tuition and not
get fool ideas that he could fight on the square well enough to keep
himself warm. He foretold a future of failure and gutter poverty
should the fool hold to this suicidal new plan.
To all of which Dan Rorke answered not a word; but sat glumly frowning
at the spotty tablecloth and occasionally letting his fidgety hand
rest for a second on Jeff’s head. When at last Keegan had run down and
was bereft equally of breath and vocabulary and emotion, Dan began to
speak. He did not look at the puffingly apoplectic manager, but
rambled on as if addressing the hole in his napkin.
“A feller told me once,” he began, “that there’s mighty little a
collie dog don’t know. And I’ve seen enough of Jeff, here, to find out
that’s so. Jeff c’n tell when I’m blue and when I’m tickled, just by
looking at me. It--it’d be funny, wouldn’t it, if he c’d get to
telling, by looking at me, that I’m not on the square? A dog with
Jeff’s breeding and Jeff’s sense would sure be too high-toned to pal
with a crook, if he knowed it. And he knows a lot of things I’d never
s’posed a animal c’d know.”
He looked down again at the collie as if for moral support. At the
worry in his master’s glance, Jeff’s dark eyes took on a glint of
eager concern. He laid one white little forepaw on Dan’s muddy boot,
and whined softly, far down in his throat. Thus encouraged, Rorke went
on:
“That’s only one end of it. Here’s another: A man’s pretty low down in
the list, ain’t he, if he can’t even fight as square as his dog c’n
fight? A clean dog’s sure got a right to a clean master. Them folks
yesterday was all praising Jeff. They wasn’t praising him so much for
licking the big feller as for licking him, _clean_; and for not
fouling when he had a chance to. I c’d see that myself. Well, I sh’d
think folks would feel that way about a man that fights clean.
Anyhow,” he finished defiantly, “no poor dog’s going to have the right
to say he’s a whiter man than what I am. I been thinking it all over.
And that’s the answer. I’m off fouling. Like I said.”
For the next twenty-four hours the bungalow and the gym were vibrant
with the sounds of argument and vituperation. Keegan exhausted his
every battery. And--like most men who think slowly and seldom--Dan
Rorke grew more and more firmly set in his queer resolution, the more
he discussed it.
Even stolid Bud Curly, his sparring partner and general handy man
round the gym, was moved to bewilderment by the once-docile fighter’s
firmness in resisting the all-powerful boss.
Only once, in a day and night of abusive exhortation on Red’s part,
did Dan lose for an instant his sullen calm. That was when Keegan
grumbled:
“It’s all the damn’ dog’s fault. It’s him that’s turned you loony.
I’ve got a good mind to shoot him. Then maybe you’ll----”
“You shoot that dog,” flared Rorke, striding up to the little manager,
his thick fingers working convulsively, “and, by the good Lord, I
swear I’ll break your neck over my knee; if I go to the chair for it.
That goes for _you_, too, Curly! If you think I’m bluffing, you’d best
change your mind--unless you’re sick of staying alive. It goes!”
To Bud Curly’s surprise the irascible Red did not retort. Instead, he
stood looking long and earnestly at the raging fighter. Then he said
with conciliatory calm:
“Nobody wants to hurt the purp, Dan. Climb down off the ceiling. And
if you’re so dead set on playing the fool--well, I s’pose I’ll have to
trail my bets along with yours. You can’t lick Feltman on the square.
But it won’t be my fault if you don’t put up the best fight of your
life ag’in him. It’s too late to cancel the match now. All me and
Curly c’n do is to train you to the minute and trust to luck for the
rest.”
Glad to have won his sorry point, Dan settled down with grim energy
to the task of training. He knew how slight were his chances of
victory. Yet he was ready to meet the suddenly reconciled Keegan
halfway, by training at his level best.
Feltman and a little retinue came to Pitvale, in order to be on the
ground, and to avoid travel before the fight. They set up training
quarters scarce two blocks away from Keegan’s bungalow.
For nearly a month the two rivals wrought at their preparations for
the battle. Once or twice on hike or sprint they chanced to meet in
street or highroad. And such well-rehearsed chance meetings, with
their mutual scowling frigidity, served Kampfmuller as splendid
“grudge-fight” copy for the _Chronicle_.
The fight was to be held in the Pitvale Coliseum, a vast and barnlike
structure originally built for state conventions and for summer
Chautauqua lectures. It was scheduled for ten o’clock on the night of
April second.
On the morning of April second Dan Rorke awoke from a ten-hour sleep,
ran under the shower, rubbed down, slipped into his clothes, and
started for breakfast with the appetite of a longshoreman. His nerves
as well as his physique had profited by his hard and wise training.
If he was due to end the day in defeat, at least the thought of it
had not marred his night’s rest or his appetite.
Outside his bedroom door he paused as usual for his morning frolic
with Jeff. But Jeff was not there.
In all their long months of chumship this was the first morning that
Jeff had not been on hand to greet with noisy delight his new-awakened
master. And the dog’s absence perplexed Rorke.
Downstairs he went, hoping to find the collie waiting for him in the
dining-room. The room was empty. Whistling for the missing Jeff, Dan
went out on the tiny front porch. No dog was in view. But he saw
Keegan and Bud working with scrambly haste at a far end of the yard,
piling shovelfuls of fresh dirt into what looked like a new-dug hole
under the yard’s one fruit tree.
Before Dan could call out, Curly happened to look up from his toil;
and caught sight of him as he stood on the porch steps. Curly nudged
Keegan and said something out of the corner of his mouth. The two
exchanged nervous whispers; then Red dropped his spade and came
hurrying towards the house, a labouredly artificial smile of greeting
on his bothered face.
“Seen Jeff, anywhere?” asked Rorke, his puzzled eyes still on Curly,
who was now patting the crumbly earth smooth over the filled
excavation.
“Sure, I’ve seen him!” babbled Keegan with forced joviality, and
looking anywhere rather than at Dan. “He was frisking round here just
a minute ago. Must ‘a’ run down street, a ways. He’ll be back soon.
Come on in and eat! Sleep all right? I wasn’t expecting you down for
another ten minutes.”
He had mounted the steps and almost forcibly was propelling Dan
indoors.
“Looking for Jeff?” hollowly queried Bud Curly, coming up the steps
behind him. “He’s all right. Good old Jeff’s all right. He was playing
round in the gym just now.”
Dan Rorke was the least subtle of men; and his brain was too small to
hold suspicion. But a five-year-old child would have been keenly aware
of the guilt and furtiveness in the manner of the two. Dan stopped
short. He looked from one to the other of them; then at the fresh
earth under the fruit tree.
“Red, you told me Jeff went down street!” he accused. “And now Bud
says he’s out in the gym. Which of you is lying? And why is either of
you lying? And what were you burying out there? Speak up, one of you;
or I’ll go there and dig till I find out!”
He spoke with rising excitement. As he finished he made as if to
start across the yard towards the tree. Both men seized him and both
began speaking at once.
“Jeff’s all right!” insisted Red. “And we was just spading up the
earth to make that tree grow better. It’s too spindly. And----”
“Yes,” declared Bud in the same breath, “Jeff’s feeling fine. He’ll be
back pres’n’ly. We was trying to see could we bury some garbage out
yonder, ’stead of bothering to burn it. We----”
“Jeff is dead!” interrupted Dan, his voice all at once lifeless and
flat. “You been burying him. You don’t want me to know. He----”
The two others fidgeted guiltily. Then, clearing his throat, Keegan
said:
“I wanted to keep it from you, till after to-night, Danny. I’m sorry.
Sorry, right down to the ground. But since you’ve guessed that much of
it I’d best tell you the whole thing. Buck up and take it like a
he-man, son. After all, he was only just a dog. I’ll buy you another
one and----”
“There ain’t any other one!” denied Rorke chokingly. “There was only
just Jeff! Him and me. And he was the chum I-- What happened to him?”
he demanded fiercely, swallowing very hard and trying to keep his
voice steady and his eyes dry. “Spill it!”
“Then take it!” cried Keegan harshly. “Take it straight, like a
he-man had ought to take rotten news. This morning, when I went apast
your door, there lay Jeff. He was stone-dead. I picked him up and
brang him down on the porch. I knowed how it’d queer your nerve to
find out he was gone. So I aimed to bury him and tell you he’d just
strayed off, like; and that he would come home by and by. When I got
him out on the porch I noticed he was all strained backward. And I’d
seen dogs poisoned by strychnia before. There ain’t any other poison
that makes ’em look that way. He----”
“Poisoned!” yelled Dan in blind fury, catching at the word. “I’ll find
the swine that did it, if it takes every cent I got. And when I once
get hold of him----”
“I beat you to it, Danny,” continued Red’s sorrowing tones. “I got
Curly, here, to start digging a grave; and I piked down to Reuter’s
drug store. I had a sneaking s’spicion, already. Reuter was just
opening up for the day when I got there. I asked him who had bought
strychnia of him lately. The only strychnia he’s sold in the past week
was what he sold to a man yesterday; a feller who had a doctor’s
p’scription for it, and said he wanted it to poison cats that kep’ him
awake by yowling under his window. He got Reuter to tell him how to
fix it up in a piece of meat----”
“Who was he?” broke in Rorke, his eyeteeth showing, his deep voice a
half-coherent growl. “Who----”
“The doctor that gave the man the p’scription,” said Keegan slowly,
“was that old down-and-out M. D. slob that Feltman has for a handy
man. The feller that bought the poison and asked Reuter how to fix it
was--Kid Feltman. He----”
The manager got no further. Dan Rorke was out of the door and down the
steps at one bound. It was only as he stopped to yank madly at the
gate latch that Red and Curly overtook him and threw themselves bodily
on the raging man. Even then it was a matter of minutes before their
combined strength and Bud’s wrestling grip, from behind, could quell
him.
“Let me go!” he snarled, straining and biting at the detaining arms.
“I’ll settle with him before Jeff’s cold! I’ll----”
“You’ll settle with him a heap better’n by trying to beat him up now,
with his handlers and them to keep you from doing it,” promised
Keegan. “There’s better ways. Lots better ways. You listen to me,
Danny boy!”
Momentarily spent with his own fury, Rorke suffered himself to be
dragged indoors. There Keegan faced him and said:
“You want to square yourself with Feltman--and more’n square yourself?
Good. Then here’s the way: Feltman’s always hated you, ever since he
lost to you that time. He’s told fifty folks he’d get even. He’s seen,
and he’s heard, how much store you set by Jeff. So he poisoned him to
get back at you. Now here’s how you’ll get back at _him_: You was
going to fight him clean. And he’d ‘a’ most likely won. So that ain’t
the way to fight him, if you want to settle with him for poor Jeff.
The way to do is to sail in with every foul that can git past
Kampfmuller. And a hay load of ’em c’n git past that ivory mine. Foul
him from the start, with the murderingest set of fouls I’ve ever
learned you. Cripple him so he’ll be in the hosp’tal a year. Foul him
into a dead one; and then punch his head off’n him and win as early in
the fight as you want to. Git the idee? Foul him to death if you like.
It’s no worse’n he treated Jeff. The ring’s the place to finish him.
Not now, where you’d likely land up in the hoosgow before you’d more’n
half hit him. Go to it!”
Dan grunted avid assent. And after breakfast careful rehearsing of old
foul tactics and a study of new ones began.
As Dan Rorke, stripped and eager, sat in his hot dressing room under
the auditorium that night, waiting for the summons to enter the ring,
he had his first minute of solitary reflection throughout the whole
Keegan-infested day. His manager was upstairs, wrangling with the
carnival treasurer. Curly had gone to the ring to watch the wind-up of
the second preliminary bout.
Dan was alone. In his heart still raged black hate and a craving for
revenge. And he was sick with grief over his chum’s murder.
While he sat there, the faint challenge bark of a dog--a collie,
perhaps--from nowhere in particular, drifted to him through the
ill-boarded dressing-room walls. At the sound Dan started violently.
“_Jeff?_” he whispered under his breath.
As if in answer to his call, the room all at once seemed athrob with
the presence of his loved dog. In superstitious awe Dan peered about
him. Then he straightened his bent body. And to an unseen Something he
began to speak.
“We’re going to pay up the bill in a few minutes now, Jeffie!” he
promised. “Watch me!”
The foolish words started a new train of thoughts in the tormented
brain. Watch him? The clean-fighting dog watch his master put up the
foulest fight of his career? With the vision came sharp revulsion.
“Watch me, Jeff!” he repeated aloud. “Watch me do it! Watch me do it,
square! _Square_, Jeffie, boy!”
While the odd exaltation was still upon him Keegan and Curly came
back to the dressing room to escort him to the arena.
The Pitvale Athletic Carnival crowd that night witnessed the bloodiest
and most spectacularly ferocious battle in the annals of the local
ring.
From the sound of the gong Dan Rorke was at his antagonist, forcing
the fight at every point. Never once for the fraction of a second did
he abandon the aggressive. Feltman showered upon him an avalanche of
scientific punishment. But it failed to slow down that homicidal
attack.
To Red Keegan’s goggle-eyed dismay and despite his dumfounded
inter-round pleas, Rorke fought as clean as a Galahad. Not once would
he make use of even the safest foul. Not once would he seek to elude
the dull referee by using the easiest of Keegan’s carefully taught
ruses.
He fought like a wild beast, but he fought like a fair one. Buoyed up
by his insane hate for his enemy and by his stark craving for
vengeance, he was as a man in delirium. The hideous punishment meted
out to him had no visible effect on his maniac strength or speed. His
madness did not preclude the use of all the skill he could muster, but
it made him impervious to pain and to shock.
Round after round the fight slashed on, while the crowd screamed and
pounded in delight and while Red Keegan and Curly watched their madman
with anguished eyes. Willing to take the heaviest blow, if only he
might land as heavy a smash in return, Dan tore away at his foe.
Four times he was knocked down. Once he was unconscious for five
seconds. But borne ever onward by that wild urge of revenge he came
flying back to the combat with undiminished fury.
Flesh and blood could not stand the fearful tax indefinitely. Through
all his mania Rorke began dimly to realise that there was a trifle
less crushing vehemence in his own punches and less whirlwind speed in
his onslaught. With every atom of will and of rage and of resolve in
his whole cosmos, he scourged himself to renewed effort. The welter of
blows avalanched upon him, unfelt.
Over and over in his hot brain he was saying:
“Watch me do it, Jeff! Watch me do it, _square_!”
And he fought on.
As Dan reeled back to his corner at the end of the hammer-and-tongs
ninth round he heard, as from miles off, Keegan’s voice whispering to
him:
“Try out the good old stunts, Danny! ’Tain’t too late, even yet. He’s
groggy. Try ’em. Curly tells me he’s making a joke of how he killed
Jeff. Says he kicked the poor purp yesterday, too, when he met him in
the street. He----”
Dan heard no more. The minute’s rest was over almost before it began.
His ears ringing with the tale of the kick, he plunged back into the
fight.
Feltman met him in midring; a horribly battered and staggering
Feltman, who sought to improve on his minute’s rest by feinting with
the left and then aiming a great right swing for the head.
The swing did not land. Disregarding the feint, Rorke had bored in.
The swing passed beyond him, while his two fists were greedily busy
with infighting at his tired adversary’s body. Across the ring and to
the ropes, with all his ebbing force, he hammered Feltman. Against the
ropes he drove him. Then, as Feltman rebounded from the impact, Dan
flung every remaining sinew of strength into a cross-body right for
the jaw.
It was a reckless blow, except as a counter. And Feltman saw it coming
in time. But his worn-out guard would not obey the dazed brain’s
mandate quickly enough to block the mighty punch. Rorke’s rage-driven
right fist caught his opponent flush on the point of the chin. And
Feltman sprawled prone on his face.
Quietly, non-dramatically, he lay there, dead to the world while the
referee counted. At the count of eight Feltman tried instinctively to
get up. But he succeeded only in rolling over on his back.
Cut to ribbons, bleeding, bruised, aching and all but blinded, Dan
Rorke suffered the exultant Keegan and Bud to guide him down to his
dressing room. He had won. He had thrashed the man who had poisoned
Jeff. This much his dizzy senses told him.
But Feltman was still alive. And Jeff was dead. Dan’s heart was like
cold lead beneath his bruised ribs. His sensational victory was as
ashes and dust to him. He was deaf to Keegan’s hysterical adulation.
Nothing mattered.
Bud Curly swung open the dressing-room door. Over the threshold swept
a whirlwind of gold and white, barking rapturously and flinging itself
upon Rorke’s bleeding chest.
(Long afterwards Dan listened with a foolish grin on his swollen face
while Keegan confessed the truly Keeganesque trick whereby he had
sought to lure back his man to an acceptance of the sure-to-win foul
tactics; of the hiding of Jeff in a neighbour’s cellar for the day;
and the spiriting of him into the dressing room after the fight
began; of the coaching of Curly into indorsing the tale of poison and
of Bud’s part in the mock grave digging,--a digging timed nicely to
coincide with Dan’s appearance on the porch.)
All this, much later. But, for the instant, the only thing Dan Rorke
knew was that his dead pet--or its ghost, it did not matter which--had
come back to him; and that everything was once more tremendously worth
while and that the world was a gorgeous place to do one’s living in.
Forgetful of hurts and of weakness, he gathered the ecstatically
squirming collie into his battered bare arms and babbled sobbingly:
“I did it, square, Jeff. I did it, square! You--you _saw_ me do it,
SQUARE.”