Chapter V: The Cock of the Road

It was even as Melchior had said: Amos Hammond sought and found an opportunity before noon to speak alone with Jim Todhunter, and begged the young man to forget his outbreak of temper and remain under his roof.

"Why do you want me to stay?" asked Jim. "I have decided not to have anything to do with your business, and I won't stand for any of your impudence or tyranny."

"It would look bad, bad for both of us, if we was to break so soon; and yer friends in the States would be real disappointed," replied Hammond.

"I'll give it another try," returned Jim, "but I warn you to keep a grip on that nasty temper of yours. You may commit murder some day, if you're not careful--or get yourself killed."

He did not explain that his only reason for remaining was Mrs. Hammond's hysterical request. Hammond might know it or not, without being told it: Jim didn't care, one way or the other.

Amos Hammond was a model husband, father, and host at dinner that day--in everything but appearance. His appearance was against him. He did not look in the least like the thing he was evidently trying to act and sound like. His grace before meat was lengthy and intimate; and even while he intoned it through his nose, with bowed head and tight-shut eyes, Melchior leaned sideways and whispered in Jim's ear, "An' yesterday he foreclosed on a poor widow woman over to Kingswood Settlement!"

Jim slipped away from Melchior soon after dinner and set off up the river road with his gun under his arm. Though his glance was on the road ahead his thoughts were elsewhere, and several birds got up and away without drawing his fire. He made one shot before reaching the fork of the roads, dropping the big grouse dead as a stone as it whirred from cover to cover. Again he took the road to the left, which led up Piper's Glen. At times he walked fast, as if in a hurry to arrive somewhere, and at times he dawdled as if he had no objective and all the time in the calendar to fritter away. He was walking briskly, with a purposeful air, when he was suddenly and unexpectedly accosted by a man who sat on a mossy boulder in the deep shade beside the road.

"Where ye a-goin' to so fast?" asked the stranger, in a drawling voice.

Jim halted with a jerk, for this voice was the first intimation he had received of the other's presence.

"Beg pardon?" he returned.

The stranger arose from the boulder and stepped to the middle of the road. He moved with a slouching swagger, and the small black mustache midway his swarthy face was lifted slightly at the tips by a cryptic smile. Jim judged him to be five or six years older than himself, of his own height or within an inch of it, and a few pounds less than himself in bone and muscle. Jim made his observations and formed his judgments in a single glance of the eye.

"I asked where ye a-goin' to so fast?" repeated the stranger.

"Along this road," replied Jim.

"That's as may be," returned the woodsman.

"I suppose you are Mark Ducat," said Jim, pleasantly.

"That's me. Ye've heered o' me, hey? Well, I reckon that's all that's needed. Todhunter's yer name, an' ye're from Hammond's. But I don't hold that agin ye, for maybe ye ain't seen through Amos Hammond yet."

"I've seen enough of him to believe almost anything bad of him."

"That's the way to talk! Maybe ye was figgerin' on makin' us a visit. There's quite a raft o' Ducats within a mile o' where we stand, an' they'd all be proud to know ye. Come along."

"Delighted! You're very kind," returned Jim.

They walked onward side by side.

"Slick lookin' gun ye got there," remarked Ducat.

Jim handed it over for the woodsman's closer inspection. It was greatly admired and politely returned.

"Think ye can fight?" asked Mark Ducat.

"Might," returned Jim.

"Look-a-here, Todhunter--I don't know yer baptism name--I like ye! An' I'm goin' to talk right out to yer face, for yer own good an' my satisfaction. I can't say fairer nor that, I guess."

"My front name's Jim. Fire away!"

"Well, now, Jim, I'm Cock o' the River."

"All right," said Jim. "But I can still walk in the woods."

At that moment a girl appeared around a bend in the road ahead, within twenty yards of them. At sight of them she ran forward. They turned to her, and Jim lifted his cap. She was a tall girl of about eighteen, perhaps. In the first glance, Jim noticed her eyes more particularly than anything else about her, for they were green--green of several tints and shades, full of light and of strange depths, like clear, green water running over dark, vivid moss.

"You tell 'im, Flora," said Ducat. "He's kinder pig-headed an' don't get the idee. He's for goin' around here any time he feels like it."

"Mark's a dangerous man to cross," said the girl to Jim. "He's never been licked in a fight yet, and for two years he's fought every man who's come to these parts."

"Sorry, but that's no reason for my staying away," returned Jim.

"Then look out for yerself!" cried Mark.

Jim stepped backward two paces and in the same movement tossed his gun and coat to the moss beside the track. Mark sprang at him and missed him by an inch. Mark then swung for the jaw, but his fist was deflected by a forearm that felt like wood. Then he hooked for the stomach, but landed on a thigh as hard as rock and received a nasty jab behind the ear.

"Watch his feet!" cried the girl.

But Jim was already watching, for he knew something of fights in lumber camps. Yet Mark did not kick just then. Instead, he lowered his head and charged like a bull, only to go plunging blindly past his objective with a cut cheek. He came back quick as a mink and tried to clinch, but Jim broke his hold and hurled him across the narrow road. And again he came back, his swarthy face livid with rage and smeared with blood, his dark eyes glinting. He feinted with both hands, then suddenly snapped up his right leg until knee and chin almost met and shot his foot forward. It was quickly done, but not quickly enough to achieve the desired result. Jim had made a violent but calculated effort to escape, a half-turn and a backward jerk, and the heel of the boot caught him on the left shoulder with reduced force instead of full-force on the chest. It landed on a pad of muscle that would have protected the bone beneath from the kick of a mule. But he staggered slightly and swore softly. The other plunged almost to the knees in recovering his balance.

"Dirty work!" said Jim. "I don't like it! I've seen quite enough of your damned silly gymnastics for one day!"

He pranced forward as he spoke. Mark flailed at him and fanned the wind. He knocked lightly on Mark's nose with his left, then closed for a few seconds and drummed on lean ribs, then jumped clear, side-stepped a rush and planted behind Mark's ear that which was known as the "Todhunter Snifter" at a certain school, famous for its athletes, where more than the usual curriculum is taught. Mark continued on his way along the mossy road for a dozen paces, slumping lower and lower with every pace as if the weight of the snifter was more than his knees and shoulders could support, and at last pitched forward on to the moss with the air of a weary man succumbing to the pressure of a crushing load at the end of a long portage.

"Soul alive!" exclaimed Flora. "Was that your fist?"

Jim nodded and smiled, but he kept his eye on Mark.

"And I was afraid he would bash you all up," said Flora.

Mark scrambled to his feet, turned, stood unsteadily for a few seconds, staring at Jim with a dazed look in his eyes, then advanced, with swinging fists and wavering gait.

"You've had enough," said Jim.

"T'hell ye say!" cried Mark, thickly. "Enough be damned! Look out for yerself! I'm a-comin'!"

"Easy, Mister! Please hit him easy this time!" exclaimed Flora.

Again Jim nodded and smiled, but his eye was on the groggy but unvanquished Cock of the River.

"Wha's that?" cried Mark. "Easy, d'ye say? Hit yer durndest an' be damned to you! I ain't bested yet!"

With that he charged. Jim side-stepped. Again Mark charged and again Jim avoided him lightly. Mark leaped again, and this time Jim stood his ground, and Mark ran his poor face violently against a fending left fist that felt like a bagful of stones. Ducat staggered dizzily backward. His face streamed with blood.

"You are beaten," said Jim.

For reply, Mark lowered his head and butted like a ram. Jim swung low to the jaw as he stepped aside.

Jim picked Mark Ducat up from the mossy track and carried him to the brook, and there he and Flora Ducat bathed the cuts and bruises.

"I tried not to mess him up any more than I could help," he said to the girl. "There was no need, after landing that one behind his ear. I didn't touch his eyes, you see."

As if in response to that statement, Mark opened his eyes.

"Jim, that's the first lickin' I ever got since my old man quit larrupin' me," he said. "If I hadn't seen you do it, I wouldn't believe it; an' if I hadn't seen _how_ ye done it I'd say ye done it with an ax."

"It was just a matter of knowing how," replied Jim modestly. "I boxed seven years on end at school. Fact is, I pulled down the Middleweight Interschool Cup last year. It's about the only thing I do well."

"Say, I wish I'd 'tended the same school ye did!"

"If you had, we'd still be hammering away at each other, battling through twenty rounds to a draw!"

"Sure, Jim, yer word's good enough fer me on that subject; an' now I reckon ye're free to visit these parts as often as ye choose to, for all of me."

"Of course. On general principles I always protest against any unreasonable and unwarranted attempt to restrict my movements."

"You sure protested! Well, let's be gettin' home. Gimme a hand up, Jim, for I'm still feelin' like as if a brow of logs had went over the back of my neck."

Mark Ducat moved slowly, with Jim supporting him on one side and the green-eyed girl on the other. His knees wobbled and his feet wavered.

"Licked by a greenhorn Yankee dood!" he exclaimed, grinning painfully. "Say, Flora, what'll the folks think of it? What'll pa say?"

"He'll say it was coming to you," answered Flora. "He'll say, 'I told you so.'"

"Sure he will, an' that _he_ was never licked in his life; an' Uncle Sam'll tell how he was never bested at fightin' nor wrastlin' but by a Ducat or a McKim; an' Gran'pa Ducat'll tell about the time he hove Black Dave Davidson clean over the smoke house, an' Gran'pa McKim'll say as how Jim here must be a Highlander. They'll all have plenty to say, anyhow."

"And I'll say this, Mark--you're a sportsman!" said Jim.