Chapter III: Percival Shows His Fists

I

He ran in two moods. First he was earnest above all things to hold her hands and comfort her--to explain, to soothe, to endear. To hold her hands and tell her how fond, how very, very fond he was of her, of how they should be sister and brother, and the happiest and fondest sister and brother that ever were. To thank her, thank her for all her sweet, devoted ways. To tell her how good she was, how he admired her. That was one mood. The other was a savage and burning anger at himself, partly for his wanton act towards her, partly born of his agony of discomfort at the revelation she had made. The moods were intermingled. He yearned to comfort her for her suffering, he writhed to think he had witnessed that suffering. He was in the one part utter tenderness towards her--in the other flame, furious flame, most eager for vent.

The tricks and chances of life had fuel for the flame, not outlet for the tenderness, as he came to the nest of lights.

He went quickly to Japhra's van. It was end-on to him as he approached; and as he came to the shafts he saw a group of men there talking,--Japhra, Stingo, Boss Maddox. He supposed--and was confirmed by the words he caught as he passed them--that they were discussing the dispute. "I'll ask Pinsent," he heard Boss Maddox say, and saw and heard him turn and call "Pinsent! Here, Foxy, where are you?" as though Foxy Pinsent had been of the group a moment before.

He passed quickly to the tail of the van and himself found Pinsent. "Angry, my pretty duck?" Foxy Pinsent was saying. "Angry? Chuck! chuck!"

It was to Ima that he was saying it; and with his last words, lolling against the entrance steps, he put out a hand to chuck her chin. She stepped out of his reach, and in relief cried, "Ah, Percival!" as Percival approached.

Flame, furious flame most eager for vent!

Choked for words by the flame's fierce leap and burn, "Clear out of this!" Percival said.

Foxy Pinsent turned his head slowly from Ima to Percival and looked Percival coolly up and down with the foxy smile. He put his elbows back to lean against the van, and very deliberately crossed one foot over the other. "Go to hell, won't you?" he said mildly.

It was a double smart he took to wipe the studied insolence from his face and to plant venom there. Percival's open hand that struck his mouth--a tough, vicious jolt with the arm half-crooked, a boxer's hit--drove his head against the van; and his "Ah, curse you!" followed the sharp smack and thud quick as if the three sounds--clip, thud, hiss--belonged to some instrument discharged.

He sprang forward, head back, hitting quickly with both hands, like the rare boxer he was--feinted with his right, drove his left against Percival's forehead, took a sharp _one-two!_ on mouth and throat, and they were engaged, fighting close, fighting hard, and savage and glad, and fierce and exultant, each of them, at last to spring their common hate.

In its suddenness and fury, in its briefness and the manner of its check, the thing was like the sudden _woof!_ of flame of a spark to a handful of gunpowder. There is the belch and blinding flash of heat, then the thick cloud of smoke. There was the swift drum of blows, then the rush of feet--Stingo, Japhra, Boss Maddox, men from here, men from there, in that trap-door swiftness with which commotion throws up a crowd--and the two were grasped and pulled apart and held apart, struggling like terriers that have had the first taste of blood and to collect the glut are gone blind to blows or authority.

Stingo from behind threw his two immense arms about Percival and leant with all his weight the better to lock them. Boss Maddox thrust his tall form before Pinsent, and snatched a wrist and gripped it in his long fingers. Japhra was at Percival's hands that tore at Stingo's.

"Lay on here, some of you!" Boss Maddox called, struggling with Pinsent's arm. "Get that other arm!--Dago! Frenchy! Jackson! Darkie! Look alive with it! Drop it, Foxy! Drop it! What the devil's up with you?"

And Stingo's strained whispers, in jerks and gusts by reason of his exertions: "Easy, Percival! Easy with it! Easy, I say! You can't shift me, boy! Get that hand, Japhra! Get that hand!"

Then the smoke clears and there remains only the acrid smell of the burning, and the sense of heat.

The two were dragged apart till a safe space separated them and they fronted each other before the groups about them--their faces furious, their bodies still, but their hands plucking at the hands that held them as they made their answers.

"Struck me!" Foxy Pinsent shouted. "Struck me! By God! I'll teach him! I've been saving it up for him a long time. Let me go, Boss! What's the sense of holding me like this? Struck me, the whelp, I tell you! I've got to have him first or last! Let me go!"

And Percival: "And more to give you, Pinsent! Teach me, eh? If I could get!--Japhra! Stingo! It's no business of yours, this! Damn your interference! Japhra! Japhra! Let go my hands!"

They cooled a little as the hands still held them and their explanations were demanded. Boss Maddox left Pinsent to other constraint and came and stood in the little space between the two groups, hands behind his back in the familiar posture, shoulders slightly hunched, head on one side, and turning it this way and that as Percival or Pinsent spoke.

Presently he looked at Stingo. "That boy's right," he said, with a jerk back at Pinsent. "He's been struck. He's Foxy. This can't end here. He's got to have his rights."

"He'll get 'em," Stingo said, with as much grimness as his huskiness could convey. "He'll get 'em if I let this lot loose. Don't you let him worry, Boss."

Boss Maddox turned squarely on Pinsent. "Give it a rest till the morning, Foxy. You boys can't fight in this darkness--not you two."

Pinsent laughed: "I'm not going to fight him. I'm going to thrash him."

"Let me go, Japhra! Boss, let's have hands off! It's our show--no one else's."

Boss Maddox went back to his first contention. "This can't end here, Stingo," and Japhra answered him: "Nay, there's blood to be let, Boss. We can't stop it--nor have call to." He released Percival while he spoke, but kept a hand on him, and motioned Stingo's arms away. He spoke in his slow habit, and with seeming reluctance, but there was a glimmer of relish in his voice. "They've to settle it, Boss."

"Will you fight him, Pinsent?" Boss Maddox asked.

Pinsent shook off the clutches upon him. He came forward two deliberate paces, and with great deliberation stretched himself, and with great deliberation spat upon the ground. Then fixed his eye on Percival. "If he likes to get out of it with a whipping," Pinsent said, "I'll learn him the manners he wants with your whip and let him off at that. If he's got the guts to stand up, I'll roast him till he lays down." He thrust forward his body towards Percival and said mockingly: "Which way? Which way, my pretty gentleman?"

Percival's face was a white lamp in the dusky night. "Give us room!" he said.

Then Pinsent's voice lost its deliberate drawl and rasped out in a rasp that showed his breeding and showed his hate: "I want light to serve you up, my gentleman! Light and a pair of shoes! Christ! I've waited too long for this to spoil it. I've a pattern to put on that pretty face of yours--not in this dark. Where'll I fight him, Boss? Where?"

"Along the road in the morning."

Percival came up. "I'll not wait, Boss. You've heard him. I'll not wait."

Pinsent rasped: "Morning be withered! Now! Now, while I'm hot. Where'll I fight him?"

Boss Maddox peered at his watch, then looked across the booths. "Nigh midnight--few left yonder. We'll be shut down in twenty minutes. At one o'clock."

And Japhra, a strange tremble in his voice: "In your tent, Boss. The boys will want to watch this. Room there, and good light."

Boss Maddox turned to Pinsent: "Good for you? The circus tent?"

"The place for it," Pinsent said. "Sharp at one. Japhra, you and me are ring men; come and settle a point."

"Come thou to me," Japhra answered him sturdily. "Thou and I!--I knew the ring, the knuckle ring, before thou sucked."

"Come to the tent," Boss Maddox interposed. "Best settle there."

Japhra took Percival a space away. "Lay thee down," he said. His voice was frankly trembling now, and he pressed both Percival's hands in his. "Bide by my words; bide by them. Lay thee down till I return to thee. Forget thy spite against yonder fox. Ima!"

She was at his side, her hands clasped together, her face white and strained.

"Forget him his spite, and what comes, Ima. While he lies, with a rug and with his boots from his feet, bide thou there and read to him--Crusoe, eh? Stingo and I will make for thee, master. I am not long gone."