by Max Brand
But I was glad to go back to the priest’s house on the next day.
“So soon, my dear Leon?” said he.
“Is it too soon?” said I.
“No,” said he, “for you may see them whenever you choose from this time on.”
In this fashion I became a regular member of the household of Father McGuire. From my fifteenth to my eighteenth year, that long time of study and work continued. Then the blow fell.
It was not the deaths of my father and my mother. Those occurred in my sixteenth year. My father’s team — which was a new pair of half-broken mustangs — ran away and overturned the wagon. He was crushed beneath it and was found dead the next day. And only two weeks later my mother died of a weak heart.
These were two heavy blows to me, but still they did not bring on the crisis which had an element of tragedy in it.
Father McGuire, as my guardian, sold the butcher’s business, which my father had built up, for a good round price, and then sold the house and the horses and the few cattle. The resulting sum was a little over eight thousand dollars, and I felt myself rich, indeed.
But, a month from the day of my father’s death, these transactions being completed, I begged Father McGuire to accept the whole mass of wealth.
“Use this money however you wish,” said I to him. “I want to pay it to you to hire you as my teacher. Will you do that? Will you take it and let me come back to live with you as I have lived before?”
He looked at me with such a smile of happiness as I think few men have ever seen. But he would not take a penny of the money. By him it was banked in my name where the savings could accumulate. In the meantime, I was welcomed back to him.
“Because,” said he, “I should have to keep a hired man, if it were not for you, Leon!”
So I resumed my life with Father McGuire and Mimsy, who seemed to grow no older — she had reached that point in life where a year or two more or less made no difference. She was unchanging.
But in the meantime, the crisis had been gathering slowly about me.
It began after I had been with Father McGuire something over eight months. I was hurrying down the crooked, ugly little street of the town when I came on some youngsters of my own age playing an improvised form of football, in which the chief fun was seeing how hard the other fellow could be tackled and how many men could jump on him at the same instant as he went down.
Sitting on a fine horse at the side of the street was a handsome, strong- shouldered boy a year or so older than myself. I had grown serious, too serious, perhaps, in my time with Father McGuire. So I took no share in the fun. I stood by, as the stranger did, and laughed at the tumbles and falls.
Suddenly the shadow of horse and rider loomed across me. I looked up into his fine, sneering face.
“Are you afraid of the rest of ’em?” he asked me.
I merely smiled. I was too well known in Mendez to fear the imputation which lay behind this speech.
“What about yourself?” I said to him.
“Not in these clothes,” said he. “They’re a lot too good to be spoiled roughing it like that.”
He indicated with a sweep of the hand all his finery — which was enough to have filled the eye of a Mexican cow-puncher and delighted the heart of his ladylove.
“Things that are too good to play in are a lot too good to wear at all!” said I, for in spite of all the teachings of Father McGuire, I was full of impatience and hotness under the skin.
The tall fellow on the horse pressed himself a little closer to me, so that I had to give ground for his horse. I have said that he was handsome — yes, with a blond sort of beauty such as one finds very rarely, and eyes of as richly deep a blue as might have been wished for in a girl. So, sitting magnificently above me, he smiled on me. He was seventeen. I was sixteen. I was big for my age; he was still larger. As he came closer and felt the superiority of his size and his spirit, he smiled at me again, in his sneering way.
“I’ll tell you this, young fellow,” said this splendid rider, “no matter what sort of clothes I have on, I’ve never had any that were too good for a fight!”
“Is that so?” said I, glaring at him. “Come down, then, and give me a square crack at you, and I’ll show you how to muss up good clothes so’s they’re not fit to wear again.”
He came like a flash of light from the sky. His feet had hardly struck the ground before he was at me, and I heard a wild yell of excitement from the boys playing in the street:
“Hey! Everybody come look! It’s Lee Porfilo and Harry Chase! This’ll be the best ever!”
He did not strike me fairly as he came leaping in; I had not been practicing every day with Father McGuire and at the bag and the sand sack for nothing. If one can block the back-flick of a darting punching bag, one has at least a fair chance to block the swing of a fist. I put aside a quick thrusting of punches, and then he closed with me.
The weight of his attack sent a thrill of fear through me. I have never felt the contact of any one which was so overwhelming as that of Harry Chase; except for his brother after him. But they had one thing in common that was above mere considerations of paltry poundage and physical might. They had an immense confidence and a swelling of the spirit that made them fairly override other men as a horse might trample down a boy. So the lunge and pressure of Harry Chase baffled and awed me.
I grew weak, and I staggered back before the shock of his charging weight, so that the chorus of my friends in the street, most of whom had felt the weight of my fists at one time or another, wailed: “Leon is beat! Lee is beat at last!”
Harry Chase, with a swinging cuff of his left fist, clipped me on the chin and sent me reeling still farther away, to verify that first cry. You will not think that the boys of Mendez were very fond of me — seeing that I had always been the town bully and the town ruffian until I went to live with the priest; but I was their champion, and the home champion, no matter what his character may be, is usually favored to win. They watched with held breath or with groans, while Harry Chase drove me before him.
I think that I should have gone down at once before this berserk rush, had it not been for the training of Father McGuire. Such training at last becomes an instinct and takes even the place of courage. By very force of habit I warded off most of the blows which were leveled at me. Then, as I saw that I was keeping my own against this lion-like rush, and as I listened to the groans of shame which my companions of the town raised, I shook off my coldness of heart, and prodded at Harry Chase with that straight left which was almost a religious article in the athletic creed of good Father McGuire.
It landed. There is nothing so difficult to avoid as a jabbing, long-range left hand. It is always held out so far that it is very near the mark, in the first place. It is sent home without a preliminary drawing back of the hand to give warning.
I spoiled the next rush of Harry Chase by spatting my stiff left against his mouth, and then, as he gave back and rushed again, he caught the identical punch in the same place twice more. The third time brought a little trickle of blood and a yell of triumph from the little crowd of spectators. In fact, that crowd had been increased by others and older people crowding to doors and windows. Others, still, came running. When boys are sixteen and seventeen, the fun of their fighting is enough to draw even a crowd of mature men.
The sting of his lips, and the surprise of my counterattack, took the last of Harry’s sense of caution. He was maddened, just as much as I was warmed by self-confidence. I saw his nostrils flare and his eyes widen to the glare of a bull. He came in with his hands down, and I braced myself and took my time. I did not even have to time and check him with my left. I let him come wildly in and then clipped him with a beautiful right. It went as straight as the left, but it had just three times as much power, because it traveled just three times as far and as fast.
This punch nailed him high on the cheek. Had it been an inch lower and nailed him on the jaw bone, the fight would have ended r
ight there, and I know that if it had ended there, the troubles of the rest of my life would probably have been avoided, also. But after all, I begin to think that there was fate behind it — not my own will.
At any rate, that blow was enough to knock him flat on his back with a force that drove the dust spurting out like water under the impact of his big body. But if he were dazed, he was not badly hurt. He scrambled to his feet at once, while I stood back and dropped my hands on my hips. I knew, now, that the game was in my hands.
This fellow was big and very powerful, with just as much or more natural strength than I had; but he lacked the training and he lacked the seasoning of hard work which I had been doing in Father McGuire’s gymnasium.
So I stood back as he came rather uncertainly to his feet, and I sang out to the boys: “If any of you fellows are friends of this gent, call him off, before I do him a harm!”
There was no interference. He who attempted to take the fight off my hands would simply have been transferring it to his own responsibility. My speech affected Harry Chase as a sort of stinging challenge, or a mockery. He came at me with the snarl of a wild cat.
“I’ll about kill you for that!” said Harry uncharitably.
I hit him easily away from me with the left again.
“I don’t want to do this,” said I to the little crowd. “You see that he’s got me cornered, and that he won’t quit.”
But they were delighted. They only yelled: “Give him the devil, Leon!”
He was only a stranger, you see, and much too big a stranger for any of the other boys to handle. Now I am ashamed to confess that I did not mean what I had said. I had not the slightest desire to stop fighting. It was a full eight months since these fellows had seen me at work with my hands, and during those eight months I had been accumulating scientific fighting knowledge hand over hand.
It was the secret desire which swelled in my heart to use this big chap as a chopping block and carve out of him a perfect demonstration of my ability. I wanted to dazzle them, and I set about doing it. At any time I could have put a merciful end to the sufferings of gallant Harry Chase by snapping across a long right-hander to the jaw. But I wouldn’t do it. I started out to use him for my object lesson.
He made a perfect subject. He was thrashing away with his hands in a manner that would have taken the heart out of every other boy in town. In fact, my audience stood aghast at the coolness with which I circled this madman as he raged, and, dipping in and out, picked at him with blows that shook him like hammer strokes. They thought that it was very gallant upon my part; they thought that I was the bravest boy in Arizona, by all odds.
Of course I was simply taking advantage of the things which Father McGuire had taught me. I knew that those tremendous round-arm swings, after the style of the very blows which I myself had formerly used, were quite of no avail against a straight hitter who kept his wits about his head and his feet active beneath him.
I danced about Harry Chase, slithering in and out through his thrashing arms, putting by his savage blows with cool parries, stepping back to let thundering sweeps whir past my face the split part of an inch away, and ducking under honestly intentioned knockout blows so that they skimmed my very hair and ruffled it but did no further harm.
“Look at Leon!” my friends yelled. “He ain’t got a mark on him!”
In contrast — there was poor Harry Chase! I did not drive at the body, for fear of slowing him down. Punishment about the face stings more and saps the strength less. I had cut and dazed him, but he was as strong as ever. I had kept my promise of spoiling his clothes.
Still he swabbed off his face with a quick hand, squinted at me out of his half-shut left eye — the right was a tight-closed mass of purple — and charged again, only to be knocked, spinning, away.
Then I heard the voice of the sheriff, cutting through the noisy exultation of the boys in the street. I heard the sheriff calling: “Stop that massacre!”
In another moment he would be on us and end the fight while Harry was still on his feet, and that I could not allow. He was rushing again, his mouth open, his face hideous but determined, and I stepped in and caught him with a full shot with the right hand, which lodged just beside the point of the chin, with all my weight, and all my lunging power, and all the whip of my strong arm behind it.
Harry was tossed to the side like a feather before a puff of wind, and he lunged face down into the dust, where he lay without a quiver.
The next instant the sheriff reached him with a bound. He scooped one arm under him as he raised the boy, he pointed his other hand grimly at me: “You, Porfilo — you stay here. I’m gonna have a talk with you!”
I remained. The glory of victory was still a sweet taste in my mouth.
The face of poor Harry Chase had looked bad enough before his last fall. But now, as the sheriff lifted the inert mass, the dust-clotted crimson on Harry’s skin, his closed eyes, his thick, bleeding lips, made him look like a frightful caricature of humanity rather than the very handsome fellow he really was.
The sheriff, tough fellow though he was, was shocked.
“Who the devil is it?” he asked.
“Harry Chase,” said some one.
“Chase’s kid!” cried the sheriff with an oath, and he turned a baleful eye upon me.
I should explain that Mr. Chase had moved into the community only a scant week before, and had spent part of his huge fortune to buy a great tract of range land. There is a difference between beating to a pulp the town boys, and attacking the son of a millionaire, a pillar of the church and of law and order in general. The sheriff’s eye boded ill for me, but he said not a word until he had swabbed off the face of the boy and forced a sip of brandy between his lips.
Harry was completely knocked out. It was several minutes before he could stand on his feet, and another minute or two before his head was sufficiently cleared to thrust him on the back of his dancing horse, which seemed to understand the indignity and the shame through which his master had just passed.
“Now tell me the rights of this, Harry Chase,” said the sheriff. “How did it begin?”
“The talking I’ll do about this,” said Harry through his thickly mumbling lips, “will be with my fists — another day.”
He gave me a look as dark as he could make it through his narrowed slits of eyes. Then he climbed into the saddle and was off as fast as he could ride.
The sheriff turned to the rest of us. “You’re not through yet, Porfilo,” said he. “Boys, what sort of a club has he been usin’ on the face of poor young Chase? Tell me the truth!”
“Only his fists!” they chirped.
The sheriff gave me a gloomy look and, coming to me, he took my hands and examined my knuckles. They were badly skinned from the battering-ram service which had been exacted from them.
“Was this a fair fight?” asked the sheriff, staring at me, but obviously asking of the others.
“Why, Chase began it!” piped a chorus. “Leon, he begged Chase to keep off of him, and Chase wouldn’t!”
The sheriff paused. Then he said to me: “All right, kid. But this here sort of fightin’ ain’t boy stuff no more. You’ve growed too big. Watch yourself, Porfilo, or you’ll be in trouble — bad — one of these days!”
I suppose that I might call it my entrance into manhood, that speech of the sheriff’s. Also, it was a prophecy.
V. FATHER M’GUIRE QUESTIONS
THAT BATTLE CROWNED me with a very new sort of glory. The other youngsters of Mendez had seen me rush into fights and absorb perhaps more punishment than I gave out until I battered the other fellow down by simply bulldogging my way through to the end. But this was very different. Style once seen, cannot be mistaken, and the clean-cut hitting and blocking and footwork which they had watched in me was a thrilling thing to my compatriots of Mendez. That day was a continual triumph to me, until I came back to the house of Father McGuire.
There was something in his mind; I could tell that
by the way he looked at me, but it seemed at first to be entirely jovial.
“I hear,” said the good priest, “that you have had a fight with big Harry Chase.”
“Where did you hear that?” said I, as any vain boy would have asked.
“The whole town is talking of very little else,” said Father McGuire. “You gave him a fine thumping, Leon?”
He smiled at me. It seemed to me that I could feel his pride in me, and I expanded and swelled under the warmth of it.
“He had enough before the finish,” said I, and I was eager to tell him more. I wanted to dig into the details of that battle. There was no one else on the whole cattle range, I felt, who could understand the fine points of the work which I had done; there was no one else with whom it was really worth while to talk.
Father McGuire took out his pipe and stuffed it carefully.
“Well,” he said at last, “you had a big job on your hands, I see!”
“Why?” said I.
“Why? Because he was older. Isn’t he nineteen or twenty years old?”
“He’s seventeen — or maybe eighteen,” said I.
“But then he’s much larger. I suppose he’s fifteen or twenty pounds heavier than you are?”
“Not ten,” said I.
Father McGuire shook his head. “Nevertheless it was a risky business,” said he. “Here was a fellow older, heavier, and stronger than you are”
“Who said that he is stronger than I?” I exclaimed.
“Ah, but he must be, Lee. He has such a reputation!”
“I dunno what gave him the reputation,” said I aggressively, for I hated the imputation that any boy of my own age or thereabout might be greater in sheer might of hand than I.
“Well,” said Father McGuire, “we know that he’s the younger brother of the famous Andrew Chase”
I was hugely impressed by this. As a matter of fact, I had not heard anything about the Chase family in particular since they had come into our section of the range. But of a certain Andrew Chase I had heard vague reports from time to time.