The men prepared to go out-of-doors. The Easterner was so nervous that
he had great difficulty in getting his arms into the sleeves of his
new leather coat. As the cowboy drew his fur cap down over his cars
his hands trembled. In fact, Johnnie and old Scully were the only ones
who displayed no agitation. These preliminaries were conducted without
words.
Scully threw open the door. "Well, come on," he said. Instantly a
terrific wind caused the flame of the lamp to struggle at its wick,
while a puff of black smoke sprang from the chimney-top. The stove was
in mid-current of the blast, and its voice swelled to equal the roar
of the storm. Some of the scarred and bedabbled cards were caught up
from the floor and dashed helplessly against the farther wall. The men
lowered their heads and plunged into the tempest as into a sea.
No snow was falling, but great whirls and clouds of flakes, swept up
from the ground by the frantic winds, were streaming southward with
the speed of bullets. The covered land was blue with the sheen of an
unearthly satin, and there was no other hue save where, at the low,
black railway station--which seemed incredibly distant--one light
gleamed like a tiny jewel. As the men floundered into a thigh deep
drift, it was known that the Swede was bawling out something. Scully
went to him, put a hand on his shoulder and projected an ear. "What's
that you say?" he shouted.
"I say," bawled the Swede again, "I won't stand much show against this
gang. I know you'll all pitch on me."
Scully smote him reproachfully on the arm. "Tut, man!" he yelled. The
wind tore the words from Scully's lips and scattered them far alee.
"You are all a gang of--" boomed the Swede, but the storm also seized
the remainder of this sentence.
Immediately turning their backs upon the wind, the men had swung
around a corner to the sheltered side of the hotel. It was the
function of the little house to preserve here, amid this great
devastation of snow, an irregular V-shape of heavily incrusted grass,
which crackled beneath the feet. One could imagine the great drifts
piled against the windward side. When the party reached the
comparative peace of this spot it was found that the Swede was still
bellowing.
"Oh, I know what kind of a thing this is! I know you'll all pitch on
me. I can't lick you all!"
Scully turned upon him panther fashion. "You'll not have to whip all
of us. You'll have to whip my son Johnnie. An' the man what troubles
you durin' that time will have me to dale with."
The arrangements were swiftly made. The two men faced each other,
obedient to the harsh commands of Scully, whose face, in the subtly
luminous gloom, could be seen set in the austere impersonal lines that
are pictured on the countenances of the Roman veterans. The
Easterner's teeth were chattering, and he was hopping up and down like
a mechanical toy. The cowboy stood rock-like.
The contestants had not stripped off any clothing. Each was in his
ordinary attire. Their fists were up, and they eyed each other in a
calm that had the elements of leonine cruelty in it.
During this pause, the Easterner's mind, like a film, took lasting
impressions of three men--the iron-nerved master of the ceremony; the
Swede, pale, motionless, terrible; and Johnnie, serene yet ferocious,
brutish yet heroic. The entire prelude had in it a tragedy greater
than the tragedy of action, and this aspect was accentuated by the
long, mellow cry of the blizzard, as it sped the tumbling and wailing
flakes into the black abyss of the south.
"Now!" said Scully.
The two combatants leaped forward and crashed together like bullocks.
There was heard the cushioned sound of blows, and of a curse squeezing
out from between the tight teeth of one.
As for the spectators, the Easterner's pent-up breath exploded from
him with a pop of relief, absolute relief from the tension of the
preliminaries. The cowboy bounded into the air with a yowl. Scully was
immovable as from supreme amazement and fear at the fury of the fight
which he himself had permitted and arranged.
For a time the encounter in the darkness was such a perplexity of
flying arms that it presented no more detail than would a swiftly
revolving wheel. Occasionally a face, as if illumined by a flash of
light, would shine out, ghastly and marked with pink spots. A moment
later, the men might have been known as shadows, if it were not for
the involuntary utterance of oaths that came from them in whispers.
Suddenly a holocaust of warlike desire caught the cowboy, and he
bolted forward with the speed of a broncho. "Go it, Johnnie! go it!
Kill him! Kill him!"
Scully confronted him. "Kape back," he said; and by his glance the
cowboy could tell that this man was Johnnie's father.
To the Easterner there was a monotony of unchangeable fighting that
was an abomination. This confused mingling was eternal to his sense,
which was concentrated in a longing for the end, the priceless end.
Once the fighters lurched near him, and as he scrambled hastily
backward he heard them breathe like men on the rack.
"Kill him, Johnnie! Kill him! Kill him! Kill him!" The cowboy's face
was contorted like one of those agony masks in museums.
"Keep still," said Scully, icily.
Then there was a sudden loud grunt, incomplete, cut short, and
Johnnie's body swung away from the Swede and fell with sickening
heaviness to the grass. The cowboy was barely in time to prevent the
mad Swede from flinging himself upon his prone adversary. "No, you
don't," said the cowboy, interposing an arm. "Wait a second."
Scully was at his son's side. "Johnnie! Johnnie, me boy!" His voice
had a quality of melancholy tenderness. "Johnnie! Can you go on with
it?" He looked anxiously down into the bloody, pulpy face of his son.
There was a moment of silence, and then Johnnie answered in his
ordinary voice, "Yes, I--it--yes."
Assisted by his father he struggled to his feet. "Wait a bit now till
you git your wind," said the old man.
A few paces away the cowboy was lecturing the Swede. "No, you don't!
Wait a second!"
The Easterner was plucking at Scully's sleeve. "Oh, this is enough,"
he pleaded. "This is enough! Let it go as it stands. This is enough!"
"Bill," said Scully, "git out of the road." The cowboy stepped aside.
"Now." The combatants were actuated by a new caution as they advanced
towards collision. They glared at each other, and then the Swede aimed
a lightning blow that carried with it his entire weight. Johnnie was
evidently half stupid from weakness, but he miraculously dodged, and
his fist sent the over-balanced Swede sprawling.
The cowboy, Scully, and the Easterner burst into a cheer that was like
a chorus of triumphant soldiery, but before its conclusion the Swede
had scuffled agilely to his feet and come in berserk abandon at his
foe. There was another perplexity of flying arms, and Johnnie's body
again swung away and fell, even as a bundle might fall from a roof.
The Swede instantly staggered to a little wind-waved tree and leaned
upon it, breathing like an engine, while his savage and flame-lit eyes
roamed from face to face as the men bent over Johnnie. There was a
splendor of isolation in his situation at this time which the
Easterner felt once when, lifting his eyes from the man on the ground,
he beheld that mysterious and lonely figure, waiting.
"Arc you any good yet, Johnnie?" asked Scully in a broken voice.
The son gasped and opened his eyes languidly. After a moment he
answered, "No--I ain't--any good--any--more." Then, from shame and
bodily ill he began to weep, the tears furrowing down through the
blood-stains on his face. "He was too--too--too heavy for me."
Scully straightened and addressed the waiting figure. "Stranger," he
said, evenly, "it's all up with our side." Then his voice changed into
that vibrant huskiness which is commonly the tone of the most simple
and deadly announcements. "Johnnie is whipped."
Without replying, the victor moved off on the route to the front door
of the hotel.
The cowboy was formulating new and un-spellable blasphemies. The
Easterner was startled to find that they were out in a wind that
seemed to come direct from the shadowed arctic floes. He heard again
the wail of the snow as it was flung to its grave in the south. He
knew now that all this time the cold had been sinking into him deeper
and deeper, and he wondered that he had not perished. He felt
indifferent to the condition of the vanquished man.
"Johnnie, can you walk?" asked Scully.
"Did I hurt--hurt him any?" asked the son.
"Can you walk, boy? Can you walk?"
Johnnie's voice was suddenly strong. There was a robust impatience in
it. "I asked you whether I hurt him any!"
"Yes, yes, Johnnie," answered the cowboy, consolingly; "he's hurt a
good deal."
They raised him from the ground, and as soon as he was on his feet he
went tottering off, rebuffing all attempts at assistance. When the
party rounded the corner they were fairly blinded by the pelting of
the snow. It burned their faces like fire. The cowboy carried Johnnie
through the drift to the door. As they entered some cards again rose
from the floor and beat against the wall.
The Easterner rushed to the stove. He was so profoundly chilled that
he almost dared to embrace the glowing iron. The Swede was not in the
room. Johnnie sank into a chair, and, folding his arms on his knees,
buried his face in them. Scully, warming one foot and then the other
at a rim of the stove, muttered to himself with Celtic mournfulness.
The cowboy had removed his fur cap, and with a dazed and rueful air he
was running one hand through his tousled locks. From overhead they
could hear the creaking of boards, as the Swede tramped here and there
in his room.
The sad quiet was broken by the sudden flinging open of a door that
led towards the kitchen. It was instantly followed by an inrush of
women. They precipitated themselves upon Johnnie amid a chorus of
lamentation. Before they carried their prey off to the kitchen, there
to be bathed and harangued with that mixture of sympathy and abuse
which is a feat of their sex, the mother straightened herself and
fixed old Scully with an eye of stern reproach. "Shame be upon you,
Patrick Scully!" she cried. "Your own son, too. Shame be upon you!"
"There, now! Be quiet, now!" said the old man, weakly.
"Shame be upon you, Patrick Scully!" The girls, rallying to this
slogan, sniffed disdainfully in the direction of those trembling
accomplices, the cowboy and the Easterner. Presently they bore Johnnie
away, and left the three men to dismal reflection.