FOUR MEDALS
Marvin Clark stepped promptly forward at the announcement of the
overgrown lout, who had signified his intention of whipping the young
engineer of No. 999. Clark had told Ralph that athletics was his
strong forte. He looked it as he squared firmly before the bully.
"Going to wallop somebody, are you?" spoke Clark cooly. "Watch the
system-cylinder"--and the speaker gave to his arms a rotary motion so
rapid that it was fairly dizzying, "or piston rods," and one fist met
the bulging breast of the fellow with a force that sent him reeling
backwards several feet.
"Hey, there! you keep out of this, if you don't want to be
massacreed!" spoke a voice at Clark's elbow, and he was seized by
several of the rowdy crowd and forced back from the side of Ralph.
"Hands off!" shouted Clark, and he cleared a circle about him with a
vigorous sweep of his arms.
"Don't you mix in a fair fight, then," warned a big fellow in the
crowd, threateningly.
"Ah, it's going to be a fair fight, is it?" demanded Clark.
"Yes, it is."
"I'll see to it that it is," remarked Clark briefly.
The fellow he had dazed with his rapid-fire display of muscle had
regained his poise, and was now again facing the young engineer.
"Understand?" he demanded, hunching up his shoulders and staring
viciously at Ralph. "I'm Billy Bouncer."
"Are you?" said Ralph simply.
"I am, and don't you forget it. I happen to have got a tip from my
uncle, John Evans, of Stanley Junction. I guess you know him."
"I do," announced Ralph bluntly, "and if you are as mean a specimen of
a boy as he is of a man, I'm sorry for you."
"What?" roared the young ruffian, raising his fists. "Do you see
that?" and he put one out, doubled up.
"I do, and it's mighty dirty, I can tell you."
"Insult me, do you? I guess you don't know who I am. Champion,
see?--light-weight champion of this burg, and I wear four medals, and
here they are," and Bouncer threw back his coat and vauntingly
displayed four gleaming silver discs pinned to his vest.
"If you had four more, big as cartwheels, I don't see how I would be
interested," observed Ralph.
"You don't?" yelled Bouncer, hopping mad at failing to dazzle this new
opponent with an acquisition that had awed his juvenile cohorts and
admirers. "Why, I'll grind you to powder! Strip."
With this Bouncer threw off his coat, and there was a scuffle among
his minions to secure the honor of holding it.
"I don't intend to strip," remarked Ralph, "and I don't want to strike
you, but you've got to open a way for myself and my friend to go about
our business, or I'll knock you down."
"You'll----Fellows, hear him!" shrieked Bouncer, dancing from foot to
foot. "Oh, you mincemeat! up with your fists! It's business now."
The young engineer saw that it was impossible to evade a fight. The
allusion of Bouncer to Jim Evans was enlightening. It explained the
animus of the present attack.
If Lemuel Fogg had been bent on queering the special record run to
Bridgeport out of jealousy, Evans, a former boon companion of the
fireman, had it in for Ralph on a more malicious basis. The young
railroader knew that Evans was capable of any meanness or cruelty to
pay him back for causing his arrest as an incendiary during the recent
railroad strike on the Great Northern.
There was no doubt but what Evans had advised his graceless nephew of
the intended visit of Ralph to Bridgeport. During the strike Evans had
maimed railroad men and had been guilty of many other cruel acts of
vandalism. Ralph doubted not that the plan was to have his precious
nephew "do" him in a way that he would not be able to make the return
trip with No. 999.
The young engineer was no pugilist, but he knew how to defend himself,
and he very quickly estimated the real fighting caliber of his
antagonist. He saw at a glance that Billy Bouncer was made up of bluff
and bluster and show. The hoodlum made a great ado of posing and
exercising his fists in a scientific way. He was so stuck up over some
medal awards at amateur boxing shows, that he was wasting time in
displaying his "style."
"Are you ready?" demanded Bouncer, doing a quickstep and making a
picturesque feint at his opponent.
"Let me pass," said Ralph.
"Wow, when I've eaten you up, maybe!"
"Since you will have it, then," observed Ralph quietly, "take that for
a starter."
The young engineer struck out once--only once, but he had calculated
the delivery and effect of the blow to a nicety. There was a thud as
his fist landed under the jaw of the bully, so quickly and so
unexpectedly that the latter did not have time to put up so much as a
pretense of a protection.
Back went Billy Bouncer, his teeth rattling, and down went Billy
Bouncer on a backward slide. His head struck a loose paving brick. He
moaned and closed his eyes.
"Four--medals!" he voiced faintly.
"Come on, Clark," said Ralph.
He snatched the arm of his new acquaintance and tried to force his way
to the alley opening. Thus they proceeded a few feet, but only a few.
A hush had fallen over Bouncer's friends, at the amazing sight of
their redoubtable champion gone down in inglorious defeat, but only
for a moment. One of the largest boys in the group rallied the
disorganized mob.
"Out with your smashers!" he shouted. "Don't let them get away!"
Ralph pulled, or rather forced his companion back against two steps
with an iron railing, leading to the little platform of the alley
door of a building fronting on the street.
"No show making a break," he continued in rapid tones. "Look at the
cowards!"
At the call of their new leader, the crowd to its last member whipped
out their weapons. They were made of some hard substance like lead,
and incased in leather. They were attached to the wrist by a long
loop, which enabled their possessors to strike a person at long range,
the object of the attack having no chance to resist or defend
himself.
"Grab the railing," ordered Clark, whom Ralph was beginning to
recognize as a quick-witted fellow in an emergency. "Now then, keep
side by side--any tactics to hold them at bay or drive them off."
The two friends had secured quite a tactical position, and they
proceeded to make the most of it. The mob with angry yells made for
them direct. They jostled one another in their eager malice to strike
a blow. They crowded close to the steps, and their ugly weapons shot
out from all directions.
One of the weapons landed on Ralph's hand grasping the iron railing,
and quite numbed and almost crippled it. A fellow used his weapon as a
missile, on purpose or by mistake. At all events, it whirled from his
hand through the air, and striking Clark's cheek, laid it open with
quite a ghastly wound. Clark reached over and snatched a slungshot
from the grasp of another of the assaulting party. He handed it
quickly to his companion.
"Use it for all it's worth," he suggested rapidly. "Don't let them
down us, or we're goners."
As he spoke, Clark, nettled with pain, balanced himself on the railing
and sent both feet flying into the faces of the onpressing mob. These
tactics were wholly unexpected by the enemy. One of their number went
reeling back, his nose nearly flattened to his face.
"Rush 'em!" shouted the fellow frantically.
Half-a-dozen of his cohorts sprang up the steps. They managed to grab
Ralph's feet. Now it was a pull and a clutch. Ralph realized that if
he ever got down into the midst of that surging mob, or under their
feet, it would be all over with him.
"It's all up with us!" gasped Clark with a startled stare down the
alley. "Fogg, Lemuel Fogg!"
The heart of the young engineer sank somewhat as he followed the
direction of his companion's glance. Sure enough, the fireman of
No. 999 had put in an appearance on the scene.
"He's coming like a cyclone!" said Clark.
Fogg was a rushing whirlwind of motion. He was bareheaded, and he
looked wild and uncanny. Somewhere he had picked up a long round
clothes pole or the handle to some street worker's outfit. With this
he was making direct for the crowd surrounding Ralph and Clark. Just
then a slungshot blow drove the latter to his knees. Two of the crowd
tried to kick at his face. Ralph was nerved up to desperate action
now. He caught the uplifted foot of one of the vandals and sent him
toppling. The other he knocked flat with his fist, but overpowering
numbers massed for a headlong rush on the beleaguered refugees.
"Swish--thud! swish!" Half blinded by a blow dealt between the eyes by
a hurling slungshot, the young engineer could discern a break in the
program, the appearance of a new element that startled and astonished
him. He had expected to see the furious Fogg join the mob and aid them
in finishing up their dastardly work. Instead, like some madman, Fogg
had waded into the ranks of the group, swinging his formidable weapon
like a flail. It rose, it fell, it swayed from side to side, and its
execution was terrific.
The fireman mowed down the amazed and scattering forces of Billy
Bouncer as if they were rows of tenpins. He knocked them flat, and
then he kicked them. It was a marvel that he did not cripple some of
them, for, his eyes glaring, his muscles bulging to the work, he acted
like some fairly irresponsible being.
Within two minutes' time the last one of the mob had vanished into the
street. Flinging the pole away from him, Fogg began looking for his
cap, which had blown off his head as he came rushing down the alley at
cyclone speed.
Clark stared at the fireman in petrified wonder. Ralph stood
overwhelmed with uncertainty and amazement.
"Mr. Fogg, I say, Mr. Fogg!" he cried, running after the fireman and
catching at his sleeve, "How--why----"
"Boy," choked out Lemuel Fogg, turning a pale, twitching face upon
Ralph, "don't say a word to me!"
And then with a queer, clicking sob in his throat, the fireman of
No. 999 hastened down the alley looking for his cap.