The fourteen-foot batteau skimmed briskly westward along the canal, under the impulsion of a beam wind. Its leg-of-mutton sail, sagging unhandily at the leach, testified to amateur fitting. The boat itself was of rough, sturdy construction, equipped with oars as well as a mast, and held against sidewise drifting by leeboards. Amidships a strongbox, covered with sow-hide against the weather, occupied the breadth of the bottom, except for a narrow space where was stowed a small tent. In the stern, sheet in one hand, tiller in the other, Horace Amlie, M.D., smoked his pipe.
June was high in the land. Horace contemplated with lazy pleasure the vista of lush woodland and flowering swamp. He was hard and lean and weather-brown. His face, grown older than his years, was set in lines of endurance and obduracy. A reader of character would have said at a glance that Horace Amlie was a hard man. Many a sufferer along the Erie route would have given him the lie.
A Durham boat, light in cargo, hove in sight around the bend. As the two craft neared, the captain’s whistle shrilled in signal to the hoggee on the towpath, who obediently whoaed his tandem. At the same time, the sailor luffed up against the berm and let his sail slat in the breeze. A hail came from the high deck.
“Ahoy, Doc!”
“Ahoy, Genesee Rover!”
“How’s trade, my boy?”
“Can’t complain. How’s freights?”
“I’m light, as you see. Taking on planking at Bushnell’s Basin. Got some calls for you.”
The physician opened a locker and brought out a ledger. “Let’s have ’em.”
“Woman in labor near Batt’s Landing.”
“How long?”
“Since yesterday noon.”
Horace made a note. “If the wind holds, I’ll be there in two hours.”
“Won’t be none too soon, I guess. There’s been a free-for-all at Malkey’s Tavern.”
“Shooting?”
“Yeah. And knifing. One fella got it through the belly. Plenty bumps and chewed ears for you.”
“That’s a foul ken,” commented Horace, making another entry. “Anything else?”
“Usual shakes along the bank. They’re waitin’ on you. Behind your runnin’ time, ain’t you, Doc?”
“I had an amputation ten miles back. Tree jumped. Smashed the leg like a ripe pippin.”
“Them woodcutters never learn. Could you fix him?”
Horace shook his head sadly. He wanted to forget that ugly experience of blood, agony, shrieks and writhing under the knife. And the smell of burning flesh when he applied the cautery to the stump. All useless, probably. Nearly all those comminuted fractures died of gangrene. A too familiar backwoods tragedy. Poor Tim Harkness! A stout young fellow of twenty-three with a wife and two babies. Well, there was always a chance that the strong young blood would prevail against the deadly rot. In any case, he had done what he could.
“Thank you, Cap,” he called.
“Good luck, Doc.”
The sail bellied out again. The prow piled up a little white wavelet, and with that bone in her teeth the boat made a handsome six knots. The four-knot passenger packets and the slower Durhams, heavy in freight, slacked their tow to give her free passage. Even the clumsy rafts, perennially at feud with all that went down to the canal in ships, nosed the bank in favor of the itinerant physician. For Horace Amlie, M.D., after two months of this new and experimental practice, was a recognized institution along the western reaches of the Big Ditch and the wild lands contiguous. The toughest of the canallers gave him consideration if for no other reason than—well, how could they tell when they, themselves, might be in sore need of his ministrations?
At Craven’s Creek Lock the keeper passed him through without toll, which was strictly illegal, accepting the gift of a segar with aplomb, and requesting and receiving a soothing ointment for his piles. Two miles below, a man came running up the berm toward the sloop.
“Godsakes, Doc! Hurry on. She’s almost gone.”
“I’m coming as fast as the wind’ll take me. Hop aboard.”
He ran in close, and the woodsman leapt to the gunwale, almost upsetting them. His story was a familiar one. Alarming symptoms as labor drew near; no aid except a slovenly and dirty squaw; so the husband had brought his wife jolting over six miles of corduroy road in his oxcart, and she now lay under an improvised shelter of boughs, waiting and hoping.
Arrived at the spot, Horace went to work. He did not dare have the patient carried aboard the boat, as was his custom to evade the prohibition which forbade his practicing anywhere upon terra firma in New York State. In this case he must take the risk of prosecution. The husband and the squaw carried the sow-hide chest of medicines and instruments to the bedside.
Three hours later, Horace had the reward of knowing that he had saved two lives. It was his only reward. The woodsman had no money, not so much as a fip. He offered payment in stored grain or stock on the hoof, but bulky barter was of no use to the itinerant. He could not transport it. The debt was entered in his running account where Dinty would later discover it and scold.
Better returns attended his call at the tavern. The roisterer with the bullet through his belly was beyond help. But Horace patched up several stab-wounds, removed the pendent remains of an ear which had suffered an expert mayhem, treated a half-dozen contusions of varying degrees, and went on his way with six shillings cash besides a gallon of rum and two horns of gunpowder.
Sundry stops along towpath and berm followed. The friendly breeze sank with the sun. Horace bent to his oars, for he was now in a marshy stretch where he had no mind to spend a mosquito-tormented night. Four miles farther there was an inn. But inns cost money. He traveled on a rigidly economical basis. He rowed until the land lifted from the valley in shaly hills. There he pitched his tent and lighted his fire. His all-purpose woods-knife extracted several white, fat grubs from around the roots of a maple. With these as bait he had no difficulty in catching a couple of plump bullheads which, roasted on an iron prong, served him well for supper.
The useful blade was now turned to cutting hemlock boughs for his bedding. His keen nose directed him to a clump of wild pennyroyal with which he anointed himself carefully in case any vagrant winged creatures might be about. He took a swallow of his rum, set his rifle within hand-reach, pulled his blanket to his chin, and sank into well-earned slumber after a full day’s work.
Between Rochester and the developing townlet of Black Rock, there was but one physician, a rheumatic, ague-shaken, undereducated, overworked wreck, already old at forty-two, who lived at Lock Port. The rest of the field was free for Horace. Could he have had full range, he might have prospered well in that wide opportunity. But restriction to the breadth of the canal limited his resources. Even here, his legal status was questionable.
The state medical authorities, prodded by Genter Latham and his subservient politicos, had already attempted to make trouble in Albany, only to be roundly told by the Canal Commission that Erie Water was no affair of theirs and that Dr. Amlie was free to practice as he chose anywhere between path and berm. Back of this stiffnecked attitude was the powerful clique of captains with whom Horace was a favorite.
Not only their moral support, but their active aid was at the young doctor’s call. Against adverse winds, a tow would usually be offered to him. When the weather turned violent, a freighter would slack up, swing out a crane and tackle, and swing his craft and himself bodily inboard, where he could smoke comfortably in the captain’s deck-cabin until his next port-of-call was reached. Tactfully the rough canallers would manage to develop a sore throat, an inflamed joint, a more or less imaginary temperature so that the popular but touchy “Doc” might feel that he was earning his passage.
With all these favors, it was still a hard life. Horace was toughened to it and would have enjoyed it, but for the separation from Dinty. He was lucky if his duties left him four days out of the month at home.
The wife’s was the harder part. She must hold the fort, served by Unk Zeb and watched over by the faithful Teapot, facing a life which daily constricted about her. For now the wearing punishment of ostracism was being visited upon her for her husband’s sins. Inevitably the essential truth about the Latham-Amlie feud had leaked out. It was bruited about boldly that Dr. Amlie had perpetrated a false and slanderous diagnosis; that, without evidence or warrant, he had declared Wealthia Latham to be in the family way; that when time refuted his disgraceful error, he had stuck to it and defamed the character of an innocent maiden to her own and her father’s face. Public opinion held that Genter Latham would have been justified in getting down his musket and shooting the slanderer on sight.
Horace’s stauncher friends stood by the Amlies. Silas Bewar, not to be intimidated by any man, was a frequent visitor, with his prim Quakeress. O. Daggett and Decker Jessup refused to have any part in the anti-Amlie campaign, and suffered in their trade from the ill will of the town magnate. The Reverend Theron Strang was an unswerving ally. To Horace’s surprise, that volatile and light-minded humorist, Carlisle Sneed, made a practice of dropping in to ask if he could be helpful, and frequently was. Several others of the smithy coterie stood by loyally. But most of the Best People of Palmyra turned a cold shoulder upon the young wife. They got little satisfaction of it.
Dinty’s bright beauty took on pride and courage under the petty persecution. She held her head high. She returned hauteur with hauteur, sniff for sniff. If at times she suffered from loneliness, she never permitted her husband to see it. Of each homecoming, she made a little, loving festivity, with something special of her own cooking or brewing. It became the central principle of her management to maintain an unchanged front.
The best she could do was not quite good enough to fool Horace. Adversity had made him more perceptive. He sensed the strain under which Dinty was living. In the face of her valor and cheerfulness, his determination weakened. At the close of a particularly unremunerative tour, he came home to find that she had quarreled with her mother. She airily refused to give any details, merely remarking that Ma was a fussbudget and said things she didn’t mean. Horace knew that she was hurt. Loosing his cash-bag from his belt, he slammed it down on the office table, with a sadly thin effect, threw himself into his chair and glowered at the wall.
“This won’t do,” he said.
“What won’t, darling?” Dinty smiled at him with the maternal aspect which an indulgent mother bestows upon a difficult child.
“All of it.”
She lifted the bag, thoughtfully weighing it. “Didn’t you do well, this trip?”
“Seven dollars, scant, and one of those an uncurrent note.”
“Why, I think that’s pretty good!” said she brightly.
“Good enough to live on?”
“Oh, well! You’ll do better next time.”
“Damn this town and all its people!” he burst out. “God damn them for a lot of Pharisees! God damn them …!”
“Doc! Doc!” She stopped his speech with the pressure of her own soft lips. “Don’t. It isn’t like you. You frighten me.”
“I’ve had enough of it. I can earn a living for you elsewhere.”
“You’re earning it here.”
“What kind? How long since you’ve had a new gown?”
“How long since you’ve had a new coat?”
“That doesn’t matter. It’s you.”
She cocked an impudent head at him. “Don’t you like me the way I am?”
“I love you like hell. That’s what hurts.”
“Don’t let it hurt, darling. I’m happy.”
“Happy!”
“I am,” she insisted. “The only unhappy part is our being separated so much.”
“There’s an opening for a qualified medical man in Pennsylvania. At Bethlehem.”
She gaped at him. “Pennsylvania? Way down there? Leave Palmyra?”
“Are you so enamored of it?” he asked harshly.
“I ha—” She swallowed the word. “Why do you want to go?”
“I told you. I’m sick of this.”
“On my account.”
“What of it? Isn’t that reason enough?”
“Horace Amlie,” said she clearly, “I know you. If you quit the town now, everyone will say that Genter Latham drove you out. And that’ll fester inside you the longest day you live. You can’t give up, that way. Not unless you were wrong.”
He regarded her intently. “Suppose I were wrong?”
“Then you must go to Mr. Latham like a man and beg his forgiveness and Wealthy’s,” she said instantly.
“I’ll see him in hell first.”
“Then you don’t believe you were wrong.”
“I know I’m right.”
“Then we stay right here.”
“On seven dollars a week?”
“On seven cents!”
Horace’s most pitiful and least profitable clientele was that of the towpath. Here plodded the hoggees, the friendless apprentice boys, taken on under indenture for the season, neglected or maltreated, and turned off at the close of traffic with ten dollars for their total wage—if, indeed, they were not mulcted of that by pretext or bullying. Whatever the weather, they must trudge behind their tandem, permitted the respite of an occasional ride only by the more humane captains. They were orphans, foundlings, bastards, halfbreeds, ranging from a precocious fourteen to a backward twenty-one years of age. On their watch off, they slept in foul and infested corners of the hold. A more straitened and wretched existence would be hard to conceive.
One hoggee, whom he had once or twice seen but never treated or spoken to, enlisted his curiosity by reading a book as he drove. The lad was tallish, stringy, emaciated and unusually dark for an Indian, as the observer judged him to be. He worked on a small freighter of no special model, engaged in short-stretch pick-up traffic on the western run. It was a cheap outfit with a bad name. Horace asked his friend, Captain Ennis, about the lad.
“Hoggee on the Merry Fiddler? You mean the half breed? That’ll be Whistlebone.”
“Who is he?”
Ennis shrugged. “Who are any of ’em? Nobody knows about a hoggee. Why?”
“I noticed him reading a book.”
“Never heard of a hoggee that could read. Captain Tugg’ll take that out of him with a rope’s end.”
“Has Tugg got the Merry Fiddler?”
“Yes. Got jounced from the line boats. Drunk too often.”
Horace knew Eleazar Tugg only by reputation, which was unsavory. He was one of those who gave canalling a bad name. “Grouncher” Tugg, a grouncher being one who worked his hands to exhaustion and paid them only under compulsion of the law. In worst case of all with such an employer was the hoggee who received no pay until the end of his term. Under such brutality, the unhappy lad was generally too browbeaten and cowed to stand for his rights. If he exhibited that temerity, he was only too liable to meet a trumped-up charge of incompetency or insubordination, and to be flung into the canal as the final argument, while the captain pocketed his wage.
A favoring wind carried the Amlie batteau past the slow-moving freighter one bright morning. Captain Tugg, acting as his own helmsman, gave a malicious touch to his tiller, to threaten the little craft with a squeeze. Knowing his evil disposition, the watchful navigator eluded the menace, and gave him a civil good day, to which the canaller responded with a grunt and a spurtle of tobacco-juice overside. His suffused face indicated a hard night.
Drawing abreast of the team, Horace slackened sail. He saw that the driver was limping painfully. One of his shoes, hardly more than a rag of leather, was bound on with a thong. Horace hailed him.
“Hi, sonny! Sore foot?”
The lad nodded, half averting his face. Horace thought that he had a stealthy, scared look. Then he noticed the swollen redness of recent tears in the eyelids. He was surprised. Indians do not cry. He edged in closer and got a second and shocking surprise. The hoggee was Tip Crego.
“Tip! What are you doing here?”
The hoggee said fearfully, “Don’t tell them! Don’t tell them!”
“Tell them what?” For the moment Horace was puzzled.
“Don’t tell them about me,” the boy besought again. “They’d put me in jail.”
It came back with a rush now; the dead man with Tip’s feathered dart in his throat, whence Horace had plucked it. He said gently, “Nobody is going to put you in jail, my boy.”
“The man’s dead.”
Horace told a simple, straightforward, and effective lie. “Drowned,” he said. “You had nothing to do with it.”
A light of hope gleamed in the reddened eyes. “Can I come back home?”
“Any time you like.”
Depression settled again on the thin face, “He won’t let me. I ran away once. They caught me and he beat me nearly to death.”
The captain’s whistle shrilled furiously behind them, followed by a raging voice. “God damn and blast you, you pocky pillmonger! Leave my boy be or I’ll come ashore and heave you both in the drink.”
Horace paid no heed. He asked Tip, “Where do you lay off next?”
“Lock Port. Overnight.”
“I’ll meet you there.”
“Don’t let the captain know. He’d kill us.”
The sail filled. The small craft drew away. Another burst of savagery rolled downwind to Horace’s ears. The hoggee hunched his head between his shoulders and limped on.
Lock Port’s basins were well occupied that evening. The Merry Fiddler’s spavined horses brought her in at a torpid two-and-a-half mile rate, several hours after Horace’s arrival. Captain Tugg, after seeing her snugged to the landing wharf, went ashore to get drunk. Thus Horace had a clear way to Tip.
He found the boy’s body sore with contusions, the ugliest being on the right knee where the captain had kicked him because he had asked for a dollar of his wages to buy shoes. A bandage would support it, but it needed rest. He told the patient so. Tip said,
“He won’t lay me off.”
“He’s got to under the law. I’ll certify you unfit.”
“What does he care for the law?”
“I’ll talk to him.”
The boy said fearfully, “You’d better not, Dr. Amlie. He’s a hard man.”
“I’m not a soft man, myself,” returned the physician, and Tip, scanning his face, wondered what had happened, so to change him. “Will you go home with me if I get you free?”
“Oh!” Poor Tip began to cry. By that more than from his emaciated body, Horace could judge how his spirit had been brutalized and weakened.
He got the boy’s story. Tip had hunted, trapped and “yarbed” for a time, worked for an Ontario sturgeon fisherman until the man was drowned, gone hungry and cold on the road, finally, under fair promises, signed on with the Merry Fiddler. Since Captain Tugg took over, his life had been a hell. Through Satch Fammie he had kept in touch with Quaila Crego, and had once visited her under cover of night. She thought that it might be safe for him to remain, but he had the free woodsman’s horror of confinement. The thought of jail made his bones quake; the briefest imprisonment would, he was sure, kill him. He dared not take the chance. So long as he shunned the vicinity of Palmyra, nobody was likely to recognize him, especially since one of Satch Fammie’s gypsy kin had dyed his face to a deep hue with a lasting tribal preparation of green walnut juice.
Horace knew that to take Tip back to Palmyra without due process would be futile. Every newspaper issue carried advertisements offering six cents’ reward for the return of runaway apprentices. They were liable to arrest on sight, and the courts always honored the claim of indenture against them. Tip would not remain unmolested for a week at the Pinch. To help him effectively Horace must deal with Grouncher Tugg.
The most likely place to find Captain Tugg, he learned, was in a towpath coffee house—which, to the cognoscenti, meant boozing ken—called the “Hearty Swallow.” Having refreshed himself with a snack and a mug of ale in a more respectable resort, he made his way to the place.
Entering, he was enveloped in an atmosphere heavy with smoke and rich with the reek of spilt liquors. A jocund baritone was raised in a lay familiar to his ears.
The singer drew breath with an exclamation of surprised greeting.
“Young Æsculapius, by the bowels of Beelzebub! Well met. What’s your fancy?”
Horace shook hands with Silverhorn Ramsey, but declined the offered drink.
“I’m looking for Captain Tugg of the Merry Fiddler,” he explained.
Silverhorn cocked a roguish eye toward the upstairs floor, where the blowzy nymphs of the establishment carried on a sideline of recognized but unlicensed traffic.
“He’ll be a good few minutes yet, I reckon. Sit down.”
“What brings you here, Silverhorn?” inquired Horace, taking a chair opposite. “I thought you were in the lake trade.”
“I laked it for nigh a year. Smart little schooner as ever you saw. Wrecked off Oswego in last month’s gale. One hand and I are all that got ashore. Now I’m back to the Jolly Roger.”
“And Mrs. Ramsey? How is she?” asked Horace politely.
The handsome face twisted wryly. “Still got her death-grip on the purse-strings.” He eyed his companion interestedly. “What’s come to you, Æsculapius? You look more of a man than you were.”
“I’m in the canal trade, myself.”
“I heard something of that. Got into a mess with Sharkskin Latham, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” answered Horace, wondering how much he knew.
“And got run out of town, huh?”
“No!”
“Stirred your bile, have I?” grinned Silverhorn. “Didn’t sound likely to me when I heard it. You ain’t that kind. Not if I know you.”
As Horace’s vision accustomed itself to the surcharged air, he studied an altered Silverhorn. The gay and careless face was puffy. The lips were nervous at the corners, the eyes restless and, he thought, unhappy. But the old, confident, raffish charm still radiated from the man, and the elegance of the beau’s get-up shone in that dingy environment. A jeweled ring glowed as the hand that wore it tapped the table in an irregular rhythm. Silverhorn said, with an affectation of ease, “The girl: I suppose she’s about?”
“Yes.”
“She’s recovered.”
“She didn’t marry her Southern cavalier.”
“No.”
“Jilted him, I reckon.”
“You reckon wrong.”
“Maybe he jilted her.”
“He’s dead.”
“Dead? I didn’t know about that.”
Horace sensed a repressed excitement which pricked his curiosity. He said with deliberate experimentation, “Kinsey Hayne killed himself.”
The hand that held Silverhorn’s glass jumped so that the liquor slopped over. “Good God! The poor devil! What made him do that?”
“You’re asking a lot of questions, Silverhorn.”
“I’ll ask you another. Are you sure Wealthia is all right?”
“To all appearances. I’m no longer her physician, you know.”
“Doc, will you take a letter to Palmyra for me?”
“I will not.”
“You would if you knew everything.”
“I would not in any conditions.”
“I can’t be sure that my letters reach her,” complained Silverhorn. “She hasn’t answered.”
“Why should she?”
“There are reasons.”
“A girlish infatuation,” said Horace sternly. “One thing I can tell you; she’s well over it.”
“Damn you! You lie!” He controlled himself with an effort, and spoke with a queer sort of appeal, “Doc, I’ve never believed much in this love talk. But I can’t get the girl out of my mind. I’d divorce my old hag at the drop of a hat and marry that girl tomorrow if she’d give the word. Or I’d carry her off with me and to hell with all of you.”
“You’ll always be a ruffian, won’t you, Silverhorn?”
The other smiled complacently. “I’m no finicky daffodil,” said he. “There’s your man,” he added, motioning toward the stairway with a hand not yet quite steady.
It was a formidable figure that lounged out into the room, hoarsely shouting its demand for a beaker of brandy-and-egg, a gangling ape of a man, with corded arms and thick, knuckly hands. His face seemed to be composed mostly of a huge jaw, equipped with yellow buck-teeth, above which a long and leathery upper lip underhung a beaked nose. Strabismic eyes squinted out from beneath absurdly feathery brows. Although he wavered slightly, Horace judged that he was not yet drunk. He would be capable of understanding what was wanted of him.
“Captain,” began the physician with a civil intonation, “I’d like a word with you.”
“I don’t know yah,” growled the captain. “What’s it about?”
“Your hoggee. The one that is injured.”
“Whistlebone? What about him?”
“He isn’t fit for the towpath.”
“Who says so.”
“I do. I’ll be glad to explain.”
“And who the hell are you?” He peered through the murk. “You’re the God-damn gut-flusher that stopped my boy on the towpath ‘s mornin’, aincheh?” He approached the table, thrusting forward his toothy countenance.
“Look out!” warned Silverhorn sharply.
Horace, watchful, stepped lightly back. He felt a sharp aversion for that proximity, were it only because of the rank breath that befouled the air. Captain Tugg, having put his question, now answered it.
“I’ll tell you who you are. You’re one of those softmouths. A smoocher. A sneaker. A goddam churcher. I’ve booted the bum of better than you and left ’em screechin’ their prayers in Erie muck. You keep your hands off’n my boys.”
“I am a physician,” said Horace, “and I tell you that the boy is liable to lose his leg if he doesn’t keep off it.”
“What the hell do I care for his leg!”
“Do you care for a report on your boat to the Canal Commission?” demanded Horace, beginning to lose temper.
“God damn the commission and you, too!”
That jutting jaw seemed again to be advancing, as if under some vicious impulsion of its own.
“Look out!” said Silverhorn Ramsey again.
A motion so swift and deft that it was barely noticeable brought to eight his ready knife. He toyed with it, gazing speculatively at the man above him. Captain Tugg eyed the weapon with respect.
“What’s your trade here?” he asked sulkily.
“Fair play. The Doc is my friend.”
The intervention cooled the bellicosity of the captain. He addressed Silverhorn. “What call’s he got to stick in his clam?” he growled, jerking his chin toward Horace. “I got the boy indenched, ain’t I? Wanta see the paper?”
“I’ll buy it of you,” said Horace.
“My price is twenty-five dollars.”
“Nonsense! Your indenture is only for ten.”
“Twenty-five’s my price. But I’ll tell you what: I’ll fight you for it.”
This was a contingency which Horace had foreseen but hoped to avoid. He scrutinized the challenger coolly. The captain topped him two inches in height and probably two stone in heft. As against this advantage, he was perhaps forty years old and, on the evidence of his sallow skin and sour breath, not in the best of condition. Horace, trained in sparring, was no mean man of his hands, and, thanks to the regimen of his life on the water, was iron-hard in every muscle. Under prize-ring rules, the contest should be fairly equal. But would this ruffian respect any rules? Silverhorn’s thoughts were running along the same channel, for now he put in,
“Fair fighting?”
“Fair!” gibed the apish captain. “Fair! I’ll show him fair, when I get his nose betwixt my teeth.”
Now Horace understood Silverhorn’s warnings. He recalled with a sick qualm, several grisly facial repairs to which he had been called after taproom free-for-alls. This creature before him was a rough-and-tumble fighter, a biter, a gouger, a maimer. In such a battle he would have all the advantage. Yet to draw back now would incur for Horace a disastrous loss of prestige in the canal world where lay his sole chance of livelihood. There was one other chance, though a more perilous one. He said steadily, “I’ll fight you with any weapon you pick.”
“No weepons,” the other grinned. “What God gave a man to fight with like a man, and naught else.”
He was within his rights. There was nothing for Horace to do but to accept the conditions.
“You’re met,” he said quietly. “Fetch your indenture to the path opposite Stannard’s meadow at eight o’clock tomorrow morning. We’ll pick a stake-holder on the ground. I’ll put my ten dollars in his hands. The man who is on his feet after half an hour claims the pot.”
“Twenty-five,” objected his opponent.
“Ten, or no fight. Take your choice.”
Captain Tugg gave surly acquiescence. He had been taken aback at the matter-of-fact acceptance of his chosen type of combat. Nevertheless it was with a cocksure grin that he said, “Ten dollars and ten minutes—if you live that long.”
Silverhorn now spoke softly. “I’ll be in the Doc’s corner. And if you so much as reach a finger to your pocket, you big son-of-a-bitch, you’ll get my knife through your guts.”
To Horace’s surprise, the ruffian swallowed the insult. Evidently Silverhorn had him cowed; evidence that his courage was not beyond proof. As for the threat, Silverhorn explained as they went out together, that foul fighters sometimes held in reserve a species of spiked brass knuckles which could gouge out an eye or punch through a cheek at one thrust.
The mentor further delivered sage instructions on the enemy strategy and tactics, adding, “If he gets you in close, give him this.” He brought his knee up in a fierce lunge.
“He isn’t going to get me in close.”
“No? How are you going to stop him?”
“You know how to use your hands, Silverhorn.”
“Enough to keep my head,” admitted Ramsey in the ancient phrase.
“Have you ever sparred with the pads?”
“Not me.” The mustached lip curled.
“The bare knuckles are the trick, if you want to cut a man up. If you want to settle him, the pad’s the thing. I had the tip from the sparring champion of a wandering fair who gave me some lessons.”
“It don’t sound reasonable.”
“Principle of the sandbag,” explained Horace. “You can knock a man colder with that than with an iron bar.”
“I’d admire to see it,” said his second skeptically.
“Come with me to the cobbler’s.”
That artisan was abed, but obligingly got up when he learned that a sporting event was in question. Selecting his softest piece of doeskin, he worked it under his customer’s directions, stuffed it with horsehair and dried milkweed fluff, and sewed it into a rough but serviceable right-hand glove. Silverhorn viewed it with undisguised derision.
“I’ll give you a free punch at me with that pillow,” he offered.
Horace shook his head. “I don’t want to spoil a good second. Try it, yourself.”
“On you?”
“No, thank you,” grinned his principal. “Let’s find a subject.”
It being now past nine o’clock, the respectable element was in bed, but this was not the type that Horace sought. A two-hundred-pound gauger rolled up the street, singing merrily. They stopped him.
“Friend, do you want a free dram?”
“Who wouldn’t? What’s your lay?”
“Stand up and give my friend one crack at your jaw with this,” invited Horace, exhibiting the glove, before fixing it on his friend’s fist.
The big fellow scrutinized it, felt of it, and guffawed. “Two, if you like.”
He folded his arms and stood, smirking. As Silverhorn’s hearty swing landed, the smirk quivered and faded. The eyes fluttered. The knees buckled. He wobbled gently to earth.
“Be-dam; be-dam; be-dam,” he murmured in dolorous amaze.
“Be damned, myself!” echoed Silverhorn. “I didn’t give him my best, either.”
They hauled the victim to his feet, escorted him to the nearest tap, and revived him with the promised drink and an extra for luck.
“Come back to the Hearty Swallow,” said Silverhorn to Horace abruptly.
“What for? I want my sleep.”
“Bets. I smell money.”
At the coffee house Captain Tugg was accepting treats from his admirers and roaring out offers to bet on himself at two to one, five to one, ten to one, by God! if he could find a fool to take him up.
“Cover that,” invited Silverhorn, planking down a five-dollar gold piece.
The captain stared at it as if mesmerized, but recovered swiftly.
“I ain’t got the cash on me,” said he. “Fetch it with you tomorrow and I’ll cover it and as much more as your weaselskin holds.”
There was Tugg money and to spare, when Horace and his backer appeared ten minutes early, at the meeting place. There was also a goodly crowd. Matters proceeded with the formality proper to so important an event. To each principal was assigned a committee of three in support. Besides Silverhorn, Horace was attended by Captain Ennis and Old Bill Shea, who happened to be in town arranging for barreled winter fish, in his capacity as factor. The challenger’s staff consisted of Sandy Clark, a horse coper, a town tough named Miley and Captain Gadley of the Starry Flag. The two bodies chose Deacon Levi Bardo, a highly respected village trustee, as stakeholder with power of decision on moot points of etiquette. As anything short of murder was in order, the arbiter’s duties were not onerous.
The terms were substantially as Horace had outlined them in his reply to Tugg’s defi; the contestant who, at the end of half an hour of fighting, was on his feet to claim the stake, got it. Fifteen minutes’ grace was allotted for wagers. Though the physician’s popularity easily surpassed that of his ugly opponent, few cared to back it with cash. To be sure, the gauger was there with two dollars in his hand, and a secretive and knowing smile on his lips, but, except for him, Silverhorn seemed to be the only bettor on that side. To his bland inquiry about Captain Tugg’s ten-to-one, that gentleman responded with a hasty denial of such offer. As a substitute, he suggested doubles, which some of his backers raised to triples. Captain Ramsey got his fifty dollars covered in no time.
As the contracting parties tightened their belts, rolled their sleeves, and stood forth on a dry and level sward below the towpath, the disparity in weight and reach more than justified the odds. Tugg’s face was congested, his eyes bloodshot, but there was plenty of vigor in his lank and powerful frame as he flexed his ropy arms, leapt in the air, and clacked his hobnails.
“Hey! What’s this?” demanded Captain Gadley as Silverhorn prepared to lash on his principal’s odd handgear.
“My man has a sore finger,” suavely explained the second.
“Lessee that thing. What’s into it?” growled Miley.
Silverhorn tossed it over. The Tugg committee poked and prodded it, finally passing it to Deacon Bardo who judicially pronounced that, while he had seen nothing like it before, a combatant had the right to safeguard an injured member.
“Better tie it on his nose,” sneered Tugg to Silverhorn. “Is he goin’ to fight or ain’t he? He don’t look like he wanted to.”
Horace ignored the taunt, his ear attentively bent to his second who was now imparting his final admonition.
“He’ll reach with his right. When you feel his fingers, let him have it. If he draws you in, butt him.”
Horace nodded and stepped out. Tugg flailed his arms, let out a blood-curdling howl, and charged. Some object which he had not noticed interfered with his plunge, so that he stumbled and all but fell. The obstacle was the enemy’s foot, cleverly interposed as he swerved from the rush. Roaring again, the canaller repeated his advance, only to be evaded a second time. He stood, shaking his head like a furious bull.
“Close in! Close in!” shouted Sandy, the horse coper. “Grip um.”
The big man moved forward with deadly deliberation this time. Horace maneuvered along the foot of the slope until the morning sun was in the captain’s eyes. Was he going to be trapped? Captain Ennis and Old Bill shouted warnings. Tugg’s great right hand was opening and contracting. It darted forward. It clutched. Horace, set for it, put all that he had into his swing. The spectators heard a Pop! such as small boys achieve by inflating a bladderwort leaf to bursting.
Captain Tugg, with a mildly disappointed expression, wavered to earth.
It would have been within Horace’s privilege, under the rules, to kick his ribs in. He had other designs. Slowly the gladiator got to his feet, waggled his head to clear it, and lunged again at his opponent. Yells of derision sounded from his faction, as the smaller man warily retreated up the bank to the path.
“Clinch um! Clinch urn!” howled Miley, dancing.
The temporary daze had passed from Tugg’s brain. He pursued. His first experience had taught him nothing. That nervous right hand stretched forth once more, the apish fingers crisping. Horace withdrew, slowly, more slowly, hardly moving now in a sidling curve. The hand settled, gripped, half encircled the other’s neck. Tugg uttered a yelp of triumph, cut short by a second Pop! a shade solider than the first. This time the kindly earth was not there to receive the tottering warrior, for, as he gave back, his opponent’s head took him under the chin with all the spring of lithe knees in its drive, and a mighty splash marked the spot where three-and-a-half feet of Erie water closed over the distorted features.
Erie mud is slithery-soft. The fallen man wavered to his feet, choking with fury and slime.
“Stay there! Stay there!” howled his committee, perceiving the peril.
If he heard them he paid no heed. Clawing his way forward, pawing the ooze of the incline like a dog on a treadmill, he lurched on, bent half double. As soon as he was within reach of the bank, he received a neat clip under the chin and collapsed backward. Bubbles rose. Uproar filled the air. Miley, Clark and Captain Gadley rushed to succor their man, but were met by the embodiment of authority in the redoubtable person of Deacon Bardo. If aid were given to either contestant, warned the arbiter, that man’s stake would be forfeited forthwith.
“You goin’ to leave um drown?” shouted Miley.
This was rhetoric, as the extreme depth was no more than four feet. The stakeholder drew out his watch. From the face of the troubled waters a convulsed and streaming visage emerged. It coughed, strangled, retched. Horace, with an intent expression, waited on the bank.
“Keep away! Keep away!” Tugg’s committee unanimously yelled to their man.
The canaller hawked water from his pipes, squeezed it from his eyes, dribbled it from his sinewy frame. Hoarsely he cursed, in language so choice that the toughest water rat within hearing marveled and admired. Now he backed toward the berm. In a foot depth he bent and groped. He straightened and let fly a great rock at Horace’s head, less than thirty feet away. It was the mistake of his career.
Horace swerved lithely, but not enough for full avoidance. The missile struck him on the shoulder, fortunately the left one. It sent him rolling down the bank.
As he stopped, he whipped off the glove. Near by was a pile of stones. His cool mind perceived the opportunity; the enemy had made the choice of weapons; it could not have been a better-selection for Horace. Climbing to his feet, he picked out two rounded rocks, one double the size of the other.
Shouts and cheers apprised him that the foe was floundering back to terra firma. He set himself, the heavier missile in his right hand. He must take no chance of missing with the first shot. Certainly Tugg’s body was a fair enough target.
The rock took the canaller full in the chest. It staggered him. His arms went down. Before he could raise them in protection, the cobble smashed into his face. His most formidable weapon of offense, the great horse-teeth, caved in in a welter of blood. He fell, groaning, pawing, twitching.
The fight was over.