When the children met again on the play-ground, Jimmie was openly
challenged with cowardice. He had made a big threat in the hearing of
comrades, and when invited by them to take advantage of an
opportunity, he had refused. They had been fairly sure of their
amusement, and they were indignant. Jimmie was finally driven to
declare that as soon as school was out for the day, he would thrash
the Hedge boy.
When finally the children came rushing out of the iron gate, filled
with the delights of freedom, a hundred boys surrounded Jimmie in high
spirits, for he had said that he was determined. They waited for the
lone lad from Jersey City. When he appeared, Jimmie wasted no time. He
walked straight to him and said, "Did you say you kin lick me?"
Johnnie Hedge was cowed, shrinking, affrighted, and the roars of a
hundred boys thundered in his ears, but again he knew what he had to
say. "Yes," he gasped, in anguish.
"Then," said Jimmie, resolutely, "you've got to fight." There was a
joyous clamor by the mob. The beleaguered lad looked this way and that
way for succor, as Willie Dalzel and other officious youngsters
policed an irregular circle in the crowd. He saw Jimmie facing him;
there was no help for it; he dropped his books--the old books which
would not "do."
Now it was the fashion among tiny Whilomville belligerents to fight
much in the manner of little bear cubs. Two boys would rush upon each
other, immediately grapple, and--the best boy having probably
succeeded in getting the coveted "under hold"--there would presently
be a crash to the earth of the inferior boy, and he would probably be
mopped around in the dust, or the mud, or the snow, or whatever the
material happened to be, until the engagement was over. Whatever havoc
was dealt out to him was ordinarily the result of his wild endeavors
to throw off his opponent and arise. Both infants wept during the
fight, as a common thing, and if they wept very hard, the fight was a
harder fight. The result was never very bloody, but the complete
dishevelment of both victor and vanquished was extraordinary. As for
the spectacle, it more resembled a collision of boys in a fog than it
did the manly art of hammering another human being into speechless
inability.
The fight began when Jimmie made a mad, bear-cub rush at the new boy,
amid savage cries of encouragement. Willie Dalzel, for instance,
almost howled his head off. Very timid boys on the outskirts of the
throng felt their hearts leap to their throats. It was a time when
certain natures were impressed that only man is vile.
But it appeared that bear-cub rushing was no part of the instruction
received by boys in Jersey City. Boys in Jersey City were apparently
schooled curiously. Upon the onslaught of Jimmie, the stranger
had gone wild with rage--boylike. Some spark had touched his
fighting-blood, and in a moment he was a cornered, desperate,
fire-eyed little man. He began to swing his arms, to revolve them so
swiftly that one might have considered him a small, working model of
an extra-fine patented windmill which was caught in a gale. For a
moment this defence surprised Jimmie more than it damaged him, but two
moments later a small, knotty fist caught him squarely in the eye, and
with a shriek he went down in defeat. He lay on the ground so stunned
that he could not even cry; but if he had been able to cry, he would
have cried over his prestige--or something--not over his eye.
There was a dreadful tumult. The boys cast glances of amazement and
terror upon the victor, and thronged upon the beaten Jimmie Trescott.
It was a moment of excitement so intense that one cannot say what
happened. Never before had Whilomville seen such a thing--not the
little tots. They were aghast, dumfounded, and they glanced often over
their shoulders at the new boy, who stood alone, his clinched fists at
his side, his face crimson, his lips still working with the fury of
battle.
But there was another surprise for Whilomville. It might have been
seen that the little victor was silently debating against an impulse.
[Illustration: "NO TIME FOR ACADEMICS--HE RAN"]
But the impulse won, for the lone lad from Jersey City suddenly
wheeled, sprang like a demon, and struck another boy.
A curtain should be drawn before this deed. A knowledge of it is
really too much for the heart to bear. The other boy was Willie
Dalzel. The lone lad from Jersey City had smitten him full sore.
There is little to say of it. It must have been that a feeling worked
gradually to the top of the little stranger's wrath that Jimmie
Trescott had been a mere tool, that the front and centre of his
persecutors had been Willie Dalzel, and being rendered temporarily
lawless by his fighting-blood, he raised his hand and smote for
revenge.
Willie Dalzel had been in the middle of a vandal's cry, which
screeched out over the voices of everybody. The new boy's fist cut it
in half, so to say. And then arose the howl of an amazed and
terrorized walrus.
One wishes to draw a second curtain. Without discussion or inquiry or
brief retort, Willie Dalzel ran away. He ran like a hare straight for
home, this redoubtable chieftain. Following him at a heavy and slow
pace ran the impassioned new boy. The scene was long remembered.
Willie Dalzel was no coward; he had been panic-stricken into running
away from a new thing. He ran as a man might run from the sudden
appearance of a vampire or a ghoul or a gorilla. This was no time for
academics--he ran.
Jimmie slowly gathered himself and came to his feet. "Where's Willie?"
said he, first of all. The crowd sniggered. "Where's Willie?" said
Jimmie again.
"Why, he licked him _too_!" answered a boy suddenly.
"He did?" said Jimmie. He sat weakly down on the roadway. "He did?"
After allowing a moment for the fact to sink into him, he looked up at
the crowd with his one good eye and his one bunged eye, and smiled
cheerfully.