THE FIGHT
It was a gray, cold day, unusual for May, the kind of day that accords
with ill-nature. It reminded Billy of the incident of the opera when
Rain and Storm, driven by his own insistence, had blown in on the stage
quite out of season, and dragged off with them the remnants of winter.
For the first Sunday since May Nell’s coming he took his wheel after
dinner and went off alone. He was in accord with the sullen sky and
air. In the morning he had answered his mother angrily; because Bouncer
wished to play instead of coming through the gate when called, Billy
had slammed it on his tail, knowing well that in a happier mood he
would have been more careful.
Now he flew off down the county road at a speed that made passers turn;
but he saw no one. He neither slackened nor looked back till he found
himself at the river where the little island rose, flower-crowned.
The poppies were fewer; and where a month before the flame-flower had
triumphed, to-day wild roses perfumed the air.
Billy halted and looked up into the threatening sky. His eyes twitched,
and he noticed wonderingly that his breath was short and his hand shook
on the handle-bar. He dismounted and propped his wheel against the
fence; climbed down to the river and sat on a projecting rock, with his
feet dangling near the water.
There was a strange weight in his left side, like lead. He felt as
if the whole world was against him; and the future looked dark and
terrible. Three days ago life had reached out, a white shining road to
success. Only three days! He looked north to where clouds were shutting
down over the Mountain, gray to-day, not blue. _The_ Mountain, every
one called it, for it closed the valley and towered, a sentinel, far
above all other mountains in view. Billy thought that stood for him; he
was to be chained to this narrow valley all his life; struggle as he
might he should never be free.
If he had been older he would have said he had “the blues.”
Yet probably he would not have known that his mental--and
physical--condition was a natural result of the long strain of previous
weeks. All the children felt it. That morning the cousins, Clarence and
Harry, who loved each other dearly, had come to blows in the Sunday
School room before the teachers arrived, over the question of which one
of them should marry Miss Edith. Clarence received a bloody scratch
the full length of his palm from Harry’s Band of Mercy pin; while
the careful parting disappeared from his own hair, and a red splotch
marred the whiteness of his wide collar. No one can tell what further
calamity might have happened had not the Twins opportunely arrived and
questioned of the quarrel.
“You needn’t fight any more,” Vilette said, loftily; “we shall marry
her ourselves.”
“Yes, we shall marry her ourselves,” Evelyn echoed; while both girls
made childish efforts to rehabilitate the depressed cousins.
The unstinted praise of the children in the operetta, the aftermath of
buzz about the “show” at school,--this excitement lasted for a day or
so; but on this lowering Sunday tired nature put in a claim for her
own; and relaxed nerves were irritably near the surface.
Billy had the excitable musical temperament. He spent his forces
lavishly, and it was because of this that he was a leader; could think
and act quickly in emergencies, as when he saved the operetta from
failure. Edith and her mother knew that he had lived hard through
the past few weeks, that next to Edith herself he had carried the
entertainment, though Jean had been a host also. So it pleased Mrs.
Bennett that afternoon to see Billy start off alone for the country.
Now in the silence and fragrance his tightened springs began to
relax. Presently he found himself in a dream of possibilities of the
island,--Ellen’s Isle, he always called it; of what might be done with
the smooth places in the river, the hills, Sunol Creek not far away,
boiling and tumbling in boisterous beauty; of hidden nooks, piled
boulders, and tiny meadows, vine-enclosed and flower-fragrant.
Had he but dreamed on for an hour or so he would have returned, rested,
refreshed, the cheery boy that helped to make the Bennett house a home.
But a voice in the road above startled him. Only a word was spoken, a
greeting; but it was surly and foreign, Italian.
Billy sprang up. The dark man of the sinister house was passing on his
way to town; had answered a horseman’s salute. The boy could not see
the house; but on the high hill above it he saw the other brother,
regardless of the Sabbath, hoeing his vineyard.
Now was Billy’s chance! The place was alone! He waited till each
traveller was out of view on the curving road, then climbed up, crossed
the dusty wheel tracks, and crept into the brush on the other side.
Once hidden he “snooped” silently through the tangled chaparral, coming
shortly to the mystery-house, so close to it that he could have looked
in at the windows had they been clean enough.
A faint sound caught his ear, as of clinking coins and soft voices.
People there! He had thought it before, now he was certain. Were not
both brothers away?
Billy cuddled down in the low-growing manzanitas, whose screen was
further thickened by a tangle of wild pea vines all a-bloom. Placing
himself so that he could watch both the house and the man on the hill,
he settled to await further disclosures.
All the excited nerves in his body that had been resting were tingling
again. He could feel his temples throb, count the beats of his heart.
For a time nothing happened. He heard no different sounds, though he
strained his ears nervously. The moments passed and seemed hours. He
crouched motionless, but his stillness was not repose.
What if they should find him? Gee! Couldn’t a boy run faster than a
man? Another sound banished these thoughts; wheels on the road, whose
thick coat of dust almost hushed the ring of metal tires. A horseman
before, and now a wagon; this was an unusual amount of travel for that
lonely road.
[Illustration: A faint sound caught his ear]
Billy looked up at the Italian, saw him take a pistol from his pocket,
discharge it in the air, replace it, and go calmly on with his work.
What could that be for? A warning? Yes; for he realized suddenly that
every sound in the house had ceased. The wagon passed from sight. He
could hear the voices of the men as they drove by, see the driver
pointing to the house with his whip; and one of the women on the rear
seat looked back as long as the house could be seen. Then the soft
mysterious sounds began again.
Billy took no heed of time till he saw the man above shoulder his
hoe, pick up his wine jug, and start down the hill. At that Billy’s
heels grew swift. He scurried out of his hiding place, slipped rapidly
through the brush, found his wheel, and bowled off. No languor or
heaviness now in body or mind. Every atom of him was alert as on the
night of the opera, yet not so normally alert; for the evil atmosphere
of the place was in his soul, filling his teeming brain with imaginings
of many crimes.
In this mood he turned into the main road and came upon Jackson
limping, bloody, and crying.
“Jiminy crickets! What’s happened, kid?” Billy asked, slowing up beside
him.
“Sour’s licked me ’cause I’m a n-nigger, ’n gave T-Twinnies some
f-flowers an’ walked with ’em. He’s back there now l-lickin’ the
T-Twins.”
Billy didn’t wait. Like all generous natures that are slow to anger,
the passion once aroused possessed him to madness. He raced down the
turnpike, his face aflame. Ahead he could see the Dorrs’ horse and
buggy standing near the fence. Jimmy was on the ground beside the
Twins; and Billy saw the whip descend more than once before he arrived.
Had he known it the blows were make-believe, for moral effect alone.
Jimmy was giving a lesson that his Southern breeding made him think
necessary, if painful.
Billy heard the pitiful cries of the children, Evelyn’s the loudest,
though Vilette was receiving the blows. Every drop of blood in his
veins was a spark of fire. An unsuspected power came from somewhere,
mysteriously. He felt himself lift, expand, grow strong enough to
battle with an ox. He dropped his wheel, sprang upon Jimmy from behind,
and bore him down. In an instant he had snatched the whip, broken it,
and tossed the pieces into the field beyond. “You bully! You skunk! To
horsewhip girls! Why don’t you take one of your own size?”
Jimmy was taken by surprise. Billy was his favorite play-mate, and the
whip had disappeared before he realized the import of the attack, and
he thus lost any advantage he might have gained while Billy’s hands
were busy. But the words roused Jimmy’s anger. No boy had a right to
interfere between him and his sisters; and he struggled to his feet and
launched some telling blows.
Billy heeded no prize-ring rules, no boys’ traditions of fair play.
Every savage instinct inherited from far-distant ancestors and sleeping
till to-day, rose, conquered the human in him, for the moment made him
brutish. And the sobs of the little girls were as whips of fire.
The struggle was short. When Jimmy resisted no longer, but, after a
fall against the fence with his arm doubled under and back, did not try
to rise, Billy came to his senses. He cleared the dust from his eyes
a little and turned to see why Jimmy didn’t speak. He lay with closed
eyes, motionless!
A chill as from an ice field swept over Billy. His heart seemed to fall
down, down, as far as his shoes. He noticed that things looked darker,
and his head felt light and queer. Another fear assailed him; would
he, too, collapse, leave the little girls alone with the terror of two
senseless boys?
He roused himself sharply; found his handkerchief and rubbed his eyes
a little clearer; bent swiftly over Jimmy, who stirred when touched,
and, to Billy’s intense relief, spoke.
“I think you’ve broke my neck, kid,” he said, feebly, as quaking Billy
helped him to his feet.
“Jimmy, can you stand?”
He winced with pain, reeled, and would have fallen but for the other’s
sustaining hand.
“Here! Sit down on the bank.” Billy himself was trembling so he felt it
safer to see Jimmy sitting. “I’ll get--Twinnies, run, run to the tank
and wet your handkerchief. Quick!”
They were at the dripping roadside tank and back in a trice. Gently
where a moment before he had been ferocious with anger, Billy wiped his
play-mate’s face, or rather, changed the mud from one spot to another,
got him to his feet again, and finally into the buggy with the little
girls by his side.
“Can you drive?” he asked, anxiously, as he unhitched the horse. He
noticed with a second sinking feeling that Jimmy’s face twitched with
pain, that his right arm hung limp.
“If I can’t Vilette can. Old Bob goes by himself, anyway.” He made a
brave though unsuccessful effort to appear as usual.
“Are--are you hurt bad, Jimmy?” came in a quaking voice.
“No worse ’n you, I reckon,” was the rueful response. Billy’s
appearance justified Jimmy’s speech; for freckles were standing out
large and ghastly from one or two very white spots on the younger boy’s
battered face. “Can you get home alone?”
“Yes--go on quick! Here come folks!”
He watched the three drive away, the brother holding the reins in his
left hand; the other he did not attempt to lift; and Billy’s heart
thumped faster as fear grew to a certainty. He brushed himself weakly,
turning his back as a surrey-load of people passed.
“Had a fall, Billy?” Every one knew the boy.
“Yes, Mr. Brown,” he answered, keeping his face from sight.
“Hurt?”
“My clothes mostly,” he replied, hoping he had told the truth, though
a dreadful, big feeling in his head, the humming in his ears, and the
pain in his eyes, made him guess he had told a lie.
The travellers passed on; he righted his wheel and began his slow,
painful way home. It was still cloudy and the welcome darkness setting
in early, shrouded him as he slipped down the least public streets
and alleys to his own side gate. He put his wheel away, fed his
chickens,--though they had gone to roost,--went to the cellar and
brought meat and milk for dog and cats, and reconnoitred the way to the
Fo’castle.
Visitors! He saw them through the window. Every step was growing more
painful,--he must get to his room. The space from the woodshed roof to
the tower room, before so easily surmounted by a swinging jump, looked
now as high and far as Mount Whitney. Back to the window he turned. The
firelight was dancing on the walls. Sister Edith was talking gayly to
neighbors who were standing near the door, and May Nell was snuggled
beside his mother on the couch, the great yellow cat, or a part of him,
sprawling on her small lap.
How sweet and dear they all were! How peaceful it looked in there,--too
peaceful, clean, for a dirty, fighting brute like himself. What could
he do? He shivered in the cold, and the pain in his eyes increased.
Would he fall? Would they find him, have Doctor Carter, learn the
disgraceful truth? If the world had looked dark that afternoon, it was
now Egyptian blackness.
There was a stir in the room. His mother stood--May Nell, too--and the
cat stretched lazily on the couch. Sister Edith followed the guests to
the porch, as did his mother and the little girl--the room was empty!
He opened the kitchen door, tried to hasten noiselessly, yet thought he
clattered like a threshing machine. Into the living-room he crept, and
lumbered softly up the stairs that seemed a mile long.
“It’s time Billy was at home,” he heard his mother say as he opened her
room door; and he stumbled on more hurriedly, across the bridge--at
last, the Fo’castle!
He threw himself on the bed and wept the bitterest tears he had
ever shed in his life, tears of shame. There he lay--hours, he
thought--determined to bear his pain and disgrace alone. Yet it was
only minutes when he heard his mother in her room, coming!