Lost Farm Camp Part 3

"That's just why I don't play poker with that kind," replied David, gesturing contemptuously toward the mellow fourteen strung in loose-jointed att.i.tudes along the hotel bar. "I like sport, but I like it straight from the shoulder."

"You do, hey?" snarled Harrigan, drawing back a clenched fist. Ross looked him full in the eye, calm and unafraid. Fisty's arm dropped to his side. He tried a new tack. "I was only tryin' you out, kid, and you're all right, all right," he said with oily familiarity.

"Sorry I can't say the same for you, Harrigan," replied David. "But I'm going through to the camps. That's what I came in for. If I don't go with this crew, I'll go with another."

"Forget it and come and have a drink," said Fisty, trying to hide his anger beneath an a.s.sumption of hospitality. He determined to be even with Ross when he had him in camp and practically at his mercy. David declined both propositions and Harrigan moved away muttering.

So it happened that when they arrived at Lost Farm Camp, the last stopping-place until they reached the winter operations of the Company at Nine-Fifteen, Fisty and David were on anything but friendly terms.

David's taciturn aloofness irritated Harrigan, who was not used to having men he hired cross his suggestions or disdain his companions.h.i.+p.

When they arose in the morning to Avery's "Whoo-Halloo" for breakfast, Harrigan was in an unusually sour mood and David's cheerful "good-morning" aggravated him.

The men felt that there was something wrong between the "boss" and the "green guy," as they termed David, and breakfast progressed silently. A straw precipitated the impending quarrel.

The kitten Beelzebub, prowling round the table and rubbing against the men's legs, jumped playfully to Harrigan's shoulder. Harrigan reached back for him, but the kitten clung to his perch, digging in manfully to hang on. The men laughed uproariously. Fisty, enraged, grabbed the astonished kitten and flung it against the wall. "What'n h.e.l.l kind of a dump is this-" he began; but Swickey's rush for her pet and the wail she gave as Beelzebub, limp and silent, refused to move, interrupted him.

Avery turned from the stove and strode toward Harrigan, undoing his long white cook's ap.r.o.n as he came, but Ross was on his feet and in front of the Irishman in a bound.

"You whelp!" he said, shaking his fist under Harrigan's nose.

The men arose, dropping knives and forks in their amazement.

Fisty sat dazed for a moment; then his face grew purple.

"You little skunk, I'll kill you fur this!"

Avery interfered. "If thar's goin' to be any killin' did, promisc'us-like, I reckon it'll be did out thar," he said quietly, pointing toward the doorway. "I ain't calc'latin' to have things mussed up in here, fur I tend to my own house-cleanin', understand?"

Ross, who antic.i.p.ated a "free-for-all," stood with a chair swung halfway to his shoulder. At Avery's word, however, he dropped it.

"Sorry, Avery, but I'm not used to that kind of thing," he said, pointing to Harrigan.

"Like 'nough, like 'nough-I hain't nuther," replied Avery conciliatingly. "But don't you git your dander up any wuss than it be, fur I reckon you got your work cut out keepin' yourself persentable fur a spell." He drew Ross to one side. "Fisty ain't called 'Fisty' fur nothin', but I'll see to the rest of 'em."

Harrigan, cursing volubly, went outside, followed by the men. Avery paused to offer a word of advice to Ross.

"He's a drinkin' man, and you ain't, I take it. Wal, lay fur his wind,"

he whispered. "Never mind his face. Let him think he's got you all bruk up 'n' then let him have it in the stummick, but watch out he don't use his boots on you."

Harrigan, blazing with rage, flung his coat from him as Ross came up.

The men drew back, whispering as Ross took off his coat, folded it and handed it to Avery. The young man's cool deliberation impressed them.

Harrigan rushed at Ross, who dropped quickly to one knee as the Irishman's flail-like swing whistled over his head. Before Harrigan could recover his poise, Ross shot up and drove a clean, straight blow to Harrigan's stomach. The Irishman grunted and one of the men laughed.

He drew back and came on again, both arms going. Ross circled his opponent, avoiding the slow, heavy blows easily.

"d.a.m.n you!" panted Harrigan, "stand up and take your dose-"

Ross lashed a quick stinging fist to the other's face, and jumped back as Harrigan, head down, swung a blow that would have annihilated an ox, had it landed, but David leaped back, and as Harrigan staggered from the force of his own blow, he leaped in again. There was a flash and a thud.

The Irishman wiped the blood from his lips, and shaking his head, charged at Ross as though he would bear him down by sheer weight.

Contrary to the expectations of the excited woodsmen, Ross, stooping a little, ran at Harrigan and they met with a sickening crash of blows that made the onlookers groan. Ross staggered away from his opponent, his left arm hanging nervelessly at his side. As Harrigan recovered breath and lunged at him again, Ross circled away rubbing his shoulder.

Harrigan's swollen lips grinned hideously. "Now, you pup-"

He swung his right arm, and as he did so Avery shouted, "Watch out fur his boots!"

David's apparently useless left arm shot down as Harrigan drew up his knee and drove his boot at the other's abdomen. Ross caught Harrigan's ankle and jerked it toward him. The Irishman crashed to the ground and lay still.

With a deliberation that held the men breathless, Ross strode to the fallen man and stood over him. Harrigan got to his knees.

"Come on, get up!" said Ross.

Harrigan, looking at the white face and gleaming eyes above him, realized that his prestige as a "sc.r.a.pper" was gone. He thrust out his hand and pushed Ross from him, staggering to his feet. As the trout leaps, so David's fist shot up and smashed to Harrigan's chin. The Irishman staggered, his arms groping aimlessly.

"Get him! Get him!" shouted Avery.

Ross took one step forward and swung a blow to Harrigan's stomach. With the groan of a wounded bull, the Irishman wilted to a gasping bulk of twitching arms and legs.

For a moment the men stood spellbound. Fisty Harrigan, the bulldog of the Great Western, had been whipped by a "green guy"-a city man. They moved toward the prostrate Fisty, looking at him curiously. Ross walked to the chopping-log in the dooryard, and sat down.

"Thought he bruk your arm," said Avery, coming toward him.

"Never touched it," replied Ross. "Much obliged for the pointer. He nearly had me, though, that time when we mixed it up."

One of the men brought water and threw it on Harrigan, who finally got to his feet. Ross jumped from the log and ran to him.

"All right, Harrigan," he said. "I'm ready to finish the job."

Harrigan raised a shaking arm and motioned him away.

Ross stepped back and drew his sleeve across his sweating face.

"He's got his'n," said Avery. "Didn't reckon you could do the job, but good men's like good hosses, you can't tell 'em until you try 'em out.

Wal, you saved me a piece of work, and I thank ye."

A bully always knows when he is whipped. Fisty was no exception to the rule. He refused Ross's hand when he had recovered enough breath to refuse anything. Ross laughed easily, and Harrigan turned on him with a curse. "The Great Western's t'rough wid you, but I ain't-yet."

"Well, you want to train for it," said Ross, pleasantly.

One by one the men shouldered their packs and jogged down the trail, bound for Nine-Fifteen, followed by Harrigan, his usually red face mottled with white blotches and murder in his agate-blue eyes.

David stood watching them.

"So-long, boys," he called.

"So-long, kid," they answered.

Harrigan's quarrel was none of theirs and his reputation as a bruiser had suffered immeasurably. In a moment they were lost to sight in the shadow of the pines bordering the trail.