Alcatraz | Page 6

thought Marianne.
Something else was happening now. The big man with the sandy, long
moustaches was lecturing him of the gay attire.
"Nervy enough," he began, "but you'd oughtn't to take a hoss around
where kids are, a hoss that ain't learned to stop kicking. It's a fool thing
to do, I say. I seen once where--"
He stopped, agape on his next word, for the lectured had turned on the
lecturer, dropped his hands on his hips, and broke into loud laughter.
"Excuse me for laughing," he said when he could speak, "but I didn't
see you before and--those whiskers, partner--those whiskers are--"
The laughter came again, a gale of it, and Marianne found herself
smiling in sympathy. For they were odd whiskers, to be sure. They
hung straight past the corners of the mouth and then curved sabre-like
out from the chin. The sabre parts now wagged back and forth, as their
owner moved his lips over words that would not come. When speech
did break out it was a raging torrent that made Marianne stop her ears
with a shiver.
Looking down the street away from the storming giant and the laughing

cowpuncher, she saw that other folk had come out to watch,
Westernlike. An Eastern crowd would swiftly hem the enemies in a
close circle and cheer them on to battle; but these Westerners would as
soon see far off as close at hand. The most violent expression she saw
was the broad grin of the blacksmith. He was a fine specimen of
laboring manhood, that blacksmith, with the sun glistening on his
sweaty bald head and over his ample, soot-darkened arms. Beside his
daily work of molding iron with heat and hammer-blows, a fight
between men was play; and now, with his hands on his hips, his
manner was that of one relaxed in mood and ready for entertainment.
Presently he cast up his right arm and swayed to the left; then back;
then rocked forward on his toes presenting two huge fists red with
iron-rust and oil. It seemed that he was engaging in battle with some
airy figure before him.
That was enough of a hint to make Marianne look again towards the
pair directly below her; the hat of the gaudy cowpuncher lay in the dust
where it had evidently been knocked by the first poorly aimed blow of
him of the moustaches, and the owner of the hat danced away at a little
distance. Marianne saw what the hat had hitherto concealed, a shock of
flame-red hair, and she removed her fingers from her ears in time to
hear the big man roar: "This ain't a dance, damn you! Stand still and
fight!"
"Nope," laughed the other. "It ain't a dance. It's a pile more fun. Come
on you--"
The big man obscured the last of the insulting description of his
ancestry with the rush of a bull, his head lowered and his fists doing
duty as horns. Plainly the giant had only to get one blow home to end
the conflict, but swift and graceful as a tongue of fire dancing along a
log the red-headed man flashed to one side, and as he whirled Marianne
saw that he was laughing still, drunk with the joy of battle. Goliath
roared past, thrashing the air; David swayed in with darting fists. They
closed. They became obscure forms whirling in a fog of dust until
red-head leaped out of the mist.

Goliath followed with the cloud boiling away from him, a mountain of
a man above his foeman.
"It's unfair!" shrilled Marianne. "That great brute and--"
Red-head darted forward, a blue clad arm flicked out. She almost heard
and felt the jar of that astonishing shock which halted Goliath in his
tracks with one foot raised. He wobbled an instant, then his great knees
bent, and dropping inert on his face the dust spurted like steam under
the impact.
The crowd now washed in from every side to lift him up and revive
him with canteens of water, yet they were quite jovial in the midst of
their work of mercy and Marianne gathered that the fall of Goliath was
not altogether unwelcome to the townsmen. She saw the bulky figure
raised to a sitting posture, saw a dull-eyed face, bloody about the mouth,
and looked away hastily towards the red-headed victor.
He was in the act of picking the torn fragments of his sombrero from
the dust. It had probably come in contact with the giant's spurs as they
wrestled, for the crown was literally ripped to tatters. And when its
owner beat out the dirt and placed the hat on his head, the fiery hair
was still visible through the rents. Yet he was not downhearted, it
seemed. He leaned jauntily against