Gallegher and Other Stories | Page 8

which preserved a cliqueness
not remarkable when one considers that they believed every one else
present to be either a crook or a prize-fighter.
There were well-fed, well-groomed club-men and brokers in the crowd,
a politician or two, a popular comedian with his manager, amateur
boxers from the athletic clubs, and quiet, close-mouthed sporting men
from every city in the country. Their names if printed in the papers
would have been as familiar as the types of the papers themselves.
And among these men, whose only thought was of the brutal sport to
come, was Hade, with Dwyer standing at ease at his shoulder,--Hade,
white, and visibly in deep anxiety, hiding his pale face beneath a cloth
travelling-cap, and with his chin muffled in a woollen scarf. He had
dared to come because he feared his danger from the already suspicious
Keppler was less than if he stayed away. And so he was there, hovering
restlessly on the border of the crowd, feeling his danger and sick with
fear.
When Hefflefinger first saw him he started up on his hands and elbows
and made a movement forward as if he would leap down then and there
and carry off his prisoner single-handed.
"Lie down," growled Gallegher; "an officer of any sort wouldn't live
three minutes in that crowd."

The detective drew back slowly and buried himself again in the straw,
but never once through the long fight which followed did his eyes leave
the person of the murderer. The newspaper men took their places in the
foremost row close around the ring, and kept looking at their watches
and begging the master of ceremonies to "shake it up, do."
There was a great deal of betting, and all of the men handled the great
roll of bills they wagered with a flippant recklessness which could only
be accounted for in Gallegher's mind by temporary mental derangement.
Some one pulled a box out into the ring and the master of ceremonies
mounted it, and pointed out in forcible language that as they were
almost all already under bonds to keep the peace, it behooved all to
curb their excitement and to maintain a severe silence, unless they
wanted to bring the police upon them and have themselves "sent down"
for a year or two.
Then two very disreputable-looking persons tossed their respective
principals' high hats into the ring, and the crowd, recognizing in this
relic of the days when brave knights threw down their gauntlets in the
lists as only a sign that the fight was about to begin, cheered
tumultuously.
This was followed by a sudden surging forward, and a mutter of
admiration much more flattering than the cheers had been, when the
principals followed their hats, and slipping out of their great-coats,
stood forth in all the physical beauty of the perfect brute.
Their pink skin was as soft and healthy looking as a baby's, and glowed
in the lights of the lanterns like tinted ivory, and underneath this silken
covering the great biceps and muscles moved in and out and looked
like the coils of a snake around the branch of a tree.
Gentleman and blackguard shouldered each other for a nearer view; the
coachmen, whose metal buttons were unpleasantly suggestive of police,
put their hands, in the excitement of the moment, on the shoulders of
their masters; the perspiration stood out in great drops on the foreheads
of the backers, and the newspaper men bit somewhat nervously at the
ends of their pencils.

And in the stalls the cows munched contentedly at their cuds and gazed
with gentle curiosity at their two fellow-brutes, who stood waiting the
signal to fall upon, and kill each other if need be, for the delectation of
their brothers.
"Take your places," commanded the master of ceremonies.
In the moment in which the two men faced each other the crowd
became so still that, save for the beating of the rain upon the shingled
roof and the stamping of a horse in one of the stalls, the place was as
silent as a church.
"Time," shouted the master of ceremonies.
The two men sprang into a posture of defence, which was lost as
quickly as it was taken, one great arm shot out like a piston-rod; there
was the sound of bare fists beating on naked flesh; there was an
exultant indrawn gasp of savage pleasure and relief from the crowd,
and the great fight had begun.
How the fortunes of war rose and fell, and changed and rechanged that
night, is an old story to those who listen to such stories; and those who
do not will be glad to be spared the telling of it. It was, they say, one of
the bitterest fights between two men that this country has ever