Chapter VI: The Sticks Come Out--And a Knife

I

"How dost thou go?" Japhra asked.

"Why, my face is sore," Percival said--"sore! it feels as if I had only a square inch of skin stretched to cover the lot. I'm right as rain otherwise. That was a fight, Japhra!"

"Never its like!" Japhra answered him huskily--"never its like! Thou art the fighting type, my son. Long ago I said it. This night hath proved me!"

Percival sighed most luxuriously. Pleasant, pleasant to be lying there--bruised, tired, sore, but weariness and wounds bound up with victory. He put up a hand and took Ima's fingers that touched his face with ointment. "That's fine, Ima!" he smiled at her. "I saw you crying. You oughtn't to have been there. Did you think I was done for?"

She shook her head; tears were still in her eyes.

"Well, it's over now," he said affectionately. "Dry those eyes, Ima!"

She gave a catch at her breath. "Well, I am a woman," she told him, and her gentle fingers anointed his face again.

Their caress assisted him into drowsiness. Without opening his eyes he inquired presently:

"What's all that row? There's a frightful noise somewhere, isn't there?"

Japhra, who was looking through the forward window into the early dawn of the summer morning, turned to Ima and shook his head. She took his meaning and answered Percival: "It rains heavily. There is a storm coming up."

He dropped into slumber.

II

But the noise he had heard was heavier than the rain that streamed upon the van's roof; there raged outside a fiercer storm than the thunder-clouds massing up on the wind. It had been many seasons brooding; it was charged to the point of bursting when the two factions came shouting from the marquee after the fight. Swept up with arrogant glee, the Stingo men paraded with hoots and jeers before the Maddox vans. A stone came flying through the gloom and cracked against a tall man's cheek. He stooped for it with a curse, sent it whistling, and the crash of glass that rewarded his aim was the signal for a scramble for stones--smashing of windows, splintering of wood.

There came a wild rush of men from behind the Maddox vans. Japhra, watching from his window, turned swiftly and took up the stout limb of ash he commonly carried. He gave it a deft twirl in a tricky way that spoke of the days when single-stick work figured at the fairs, and looked at Ima with his tight-lipped smile.

"The sticks are out!" he said grimly. "I knew it would end thus;" and as he opened the door and dropped to the ground there came to him from many throats the savage cry--glad to the tough old heart of him that once had told Percival, "Ay, a camp fight with the sticks out and the heads cracking is a proper game for a man"--of "Sticks! Sticks!"; and one that came running past him toward the press shouted to him: "Japhra? Good on yer! The sticks are out! The ----s ha' come at us with sticks!"

It was Snowball White. "This way with it, boy," Japhra told him as they ran. "Thy stick thus--with a hand at each end across thy head. Crack at a pate right hand or left when thou seest one--then back to overhead to guard thine own again. I have been out with the sticks. I know the way of it."

III

Weight of numbers had told their tale when Percival got a glimpse of the fierce work.

"I'm fit--I'm absolutely fit, I tell you!" he had told Ima when, awakened by the sounds that now had raged close to the Stingo vans, and recognising them for what they were, he had shaken off her protests and entreaties and had come to the scene.

"Lie here while they're fighting us! Why, you'd be ashamed of me, you know you would!" he had cried; but when he was outside, and had gone a few steps in the rain that now was sheeting down, he was informed how weak he was, and was caught and spun dizzily back by a sudden mob of men driven towards him, and was held dizzy and fainting by the panting breaths and by the reek of sweating bodies that wedged him where he stood.

He was packed in a mob of his Stingo mates, half of whom could not free their arms for use and about three sides of whom the Maddox mob were baying, driving them further and further back against the vans with sticks that rattled on sticks and on heads like the crackling of trees in a wood fire. Two forms, taller than the rest, upstood clearly--near Percival old Stingo, hatless, blood on a cheek, and throating "Hut! Hut, boys! Hut!" with each stroke he made; further away Boss Maddox, pale, grim and iron of countenance as ever even in this fury, and using his long reach to strike with deadly precision at heads half a dozen men in front of him.

The two were working towards one another, Percival could see, and a sudden surge of the crowd brought him almost within reach of Boss Maddox's stick. It was at that moment that he felt a jostling at his ribs as of someone burrowing past him from behind, looked down and recognised Egbert Hunt--shut in by accident and trying to escape, Percival guessed.

"Hullo! You're going the wrong way to get out," he told him.

Egbert Hunt thrust up and filled his lungs as a diver might rise for air. He peered in the direction of Boss Maddox, and went down again. "I know which way I'm going," he said, and squirmed ahead--feeling and thrusting with his outstretched left hand, his right in the pocket of his coat.

Stingo and Maddox met. Each stood high above those about them and each had a cry of challenge for the other as their sticks joined. "Hut!" grunted Stingo and slashed to Boss Maddox's shoulder.

Percival saw the stick caught where it had slipped from its mark and gone into the press; saw Boss Maddox shake himself for freer action and the crowd give way from about him; saw him swing up his arm and poise his stick a dreadful second clear above Stingo's unprotected head--then saw him give an awkward stagger, saw the raised stick slip down between his fingers, heard him grunt and saw him drop down and disappear as a man beneath whose feet the ground had opened.

There arose almost simultaneously, high above the din of sticks and oaths, a scream of shocking sound and horrid meaning--"A knife! A knife!" the scream shot up--"A knife! Some bastard 's used a knife!"

It swept across the struggling men, stopped them, and was cried from throat to throat as though through the night there jarred some evil bird circling with evil cry: "A knife! A knife! Some one's knifed!"

And then again that first voice screamed: "Boss Maddox's knifed! The Boss is murdered!"

And another, most beastly: "Christ! it's pourin' out of 'im. Boss! Boss! 'Oo's done it on yer?"

And a third: "Boss! Boss! God ha' mercy!--he's dead! dead!"

And one that sprung up in panic and smashed a panic blow at the man behind him: "Dead! Dead! Gi' us room, blast yer!"

And one that sprung upright, held in his hand aloft that which caught the dull morning gleam, and screamed "Here y'are! Here's what done it! Blood on the haft!"

IV

A thud of hoofs broke into the silence in which the crowd stood held. A jingle of accoutrements; a sharp voice that called: "What's up? What's wrong here? Who called murder?" a breaking away right and left of the mob; and into the lane instinctively formed to where the body lay a mounted constable rode, pulled up his horse and cried again: "What's up? What's wrong here?"

He was answered. Scarcely the fearful whisper "Police! Police!" had run to the outskirts of the crowd, when one that had knelt sprung raving to his feet, tossed aloft two hands dark with blood, and shouted: "I called murder! There's murder here! Boss Maddox 's got a knife in him!" His shouting went to a scream: "One o' they's done it!" he screamed. "One o' they! One o' Stingo's bastards!"

There had been mutterings of thunder and swiftly gathering darkness that submerged the summer morning's gleam. Tremendous upon that accusing scream there now broke out of heaven great reverberating rolls of sound as of heaven demanding answer to that cry. The sheeting rain burst with a torrent's fury--a great stab of lightning almost upon the very camp; then pitchy black and thunder's roll again.

To the Stingo crowd it gave the last effect to the mounting panic that had mounted in them on successive terrors of "A knife!" "Boss Maddox's knifed!" "Boss Maddox 's dead!" "Police! Police!" and "One o' they! One o' they! One o' Stingo's bastards!"

Murder had been done. The Blue Boys were out. With one of their own number lay the guilt. There cried to them "Away! Away!", all the instinct that, since first law came on the land, has bade roadmen, gipsies, outlaws, take immediate flight from trouble. "Away!" it screamed; and by common impulse there was a break and a rush to their vans of the Stingo men; and in the pitchy blackness and in primeval shudder at every roll of thunder, drenched by the streaming downpour, lit as the lightning snatched up the cloak of night, there were panic harnessing and panic cries: "One o' us! One o' us done it! D'yer see the Blue Boy on his 'orse?--more of 'em coming! 'Old still!--still, blast yer! Up wi' that shaft!--up! Hell take this buckle! Are yer fixed? One o' us! One o' us!"

A van, speedier ready than its neighbours, rolled off, its driver flogging the horse from the forward platform. A blinding torch from heaven flamed down about it. The constable, giving directions by the prone figure--"He's not dead; knot those scarves together; lift, and bind 'em so"--shaded his eyes from the glare; then jumped for his horse. "Stop that van! None's to leave here! Stop 'em! stop 'em!"

Away! Away!--thundering hoofs; rocking wheels; a van overturned, and groans and curses; pursuers driven down or smashed at where they climbed the steps; the constable surrounded by those who ran beside the van he followed, dragged from his saddle, hurled aside, and his horse sent galloping.

Away! Away!--blindly into the night.

And in the night, two miles afield, one that ran with streaming face and labouring chest and that muttered "I done it on 'im--me, served like a dog before 'em all--I done it on him, the tyrang!"

V

Percival was changing his dripping clothes. Complete exhaustion had him. The bruises on his face had hardened to ugly colours, and Japhra, chiding him for having left the van, saw with concern an uglier colour yet that burned behind the bruises and whose cause made his wet body burning to the touch.

"Bed for thee!--no changing!" he said; and was answered by Percival: "Japhra! I saw him pitch and drop!"

"I have helped bear him to his van.... I saw him struck."

There had never left Percival's mind him that went thrusting past in the press, right hand in pocket. His eyes questioned Japhra and were answered by Japhra's. Then he said, "Egbert Hunt?"

"Egbert Hunt."

"What's going to happen now, Japhra?"

Strange how tricks and chances go! All that day's chain of tricks, all its train of chances, had brought Percival straight to the import of Japhra's words.

"This night hath ended this life, master. Stingo sells his stock and back to his brother near thy home. To-morrow, new roads for me."

Percival scarcely heard him. Japhra made an exclamation and caught him in his arms.

"Ima!"

She came from where she had waited behind her curtain.

"Help me here--then to Boss Maddox's van where they bring a doctor. This night hath struck down this heart of ours."