Shaye turned and looked at the two cute saloon girls on the bar. They were jumping up and down, waving their arms, their breasts bouncing so much they were threatening to take some of the attention away from the contest in the center of the floor.
“Go!” the bartender said, but neither man moved.
Well, in fact it only looked as if neither man moved. Actuality, they were pushing against each other, and neither was making any headway.
“This could be a battle of attrition,” Shaye said in Thomas’s ear.
“What?”
“One of them will have to wear the other one down.”
“Oh,” Thomas said, nodding.
One of Mary’s concerns about moving to South Texas had been that the boys would not receive a proper education. She had attended college in the East. Shaye had gone as far as the eleventh grade in St. Louis until he went out on his own. Both were considered better educated than the average westerner. The boys had ended up in a one-room schoolhouse in Epitaph, and had also received some tutoring at home from their mother.
Watching Matthew, he admired how, in profile, his middle son seemed to resemble a Greek god. While he did not consider Matthew simpleminded, the boy did have a rather simple outlook on life. He concentrated on one thing at a time, whether it was eating a piece of pie or arm wrestling. At that moment his face was a mask of concentration, and Shaye suddenly knew that Matthew was going to win. The other man’s eyes were already moving around, unable to hold Matthew’s, and his legs were beginning to tremble. For a big man, he did not have very thick legs, and his belly was not giving him the advantage it might have.
Now Matthew was bringing the man’s arm down toward the table, slowly but surely. The crowd got into it, screaming and shouting louder, while Shaye, Thomas, and James watched silently. The look on Lou Scales’s face was panicky as he too realized he was on the verge of losing.
Abruptly, Scales changed his tactic. He stood up and pulled Matthew across the table toward him. He intended to smash Matthew in the face with his fist, but Matthew was too fast for him. He blocked the blow and sent the bigger man staggering back.
“The youngster wins!” the bartender shouted, but a backhanded blow from Lou Scales sent him staggering back against the bar.
Embarrassed, Lou Scales was furious, and he tossed away the table that was between himself and Matthew.
“Pa?” Thomas asked.
“Let it go, Thomas,” Shaye said. “Matthew has to finish this now. Where are the other man’s friends?”
“Grouped over there,” Thomas said, pointing.
“All right,” Shaye said, locating them. “Any one of them goes for his gun, you kill him. You understand?”
“Yes, Pa.”
“Don’t hesitate, Thomas,” Shaye said, “or your brother will pay the price.”
“Yes, sir.”
The once explosive, once defused, situation had become explosive again.
23
Shaye watched as Matthew squared off against the larger, older man. He stood his ground and wasn’t about to back down. Whatever the original reason had been for the dispute—girls, drinks—it now appeared to be the older man’s embarrassment at having been bested in arm wrestling. Whether this was a good enough reason for his companions to go for their guns remained to be seen.
Shaye looked over at his youngest son, and James seemed to be in his element. He was now taking bets on who would win the fight, while Shaye would have preferred that he watch his brother’s back. He knew he would have to talk to James about his priorities when this was all over.
The two big men in the center of the room came together then. They grappled, and just when it looked as if they were going to wrestle, the older man unleashed a punishing right that hit Matthew in the belly. Matthew’s entire body seemed to shudder—and so did Shaye’s, as if he could feel his son’s pain—but the younger man did not back up. Instead he set his legs and launched a punch of his own, which landed on Lou Scales’s jaw. Scales had apparently expected Matthew to go down from the body blow, and as a result had left himself open for a counterpunch. His head rocked back, and before he could recover, Matthew moved in and threw a body punch of his own. Scales’s girth, which might have benefited him during the arm wrestling match if he’d used it correctly, was now of no use to him at all. His soft belly absorbed Matthew’s punch, and as all the air was crushed from his lungs, his eyes went wide and his face grew red. Matthew did not wait to see the response from his blow. He stepped back, measured the man, and hit him with a thunderous uppercut that rocked Scales’s head back, straightened him up, then sent him toppling backward until he slammed into the floor on his back. His leg twitched for a moment, and then he lay completely still.
Shocked to see Scales beaten by three punches, his friends were unsure what to do. They looked to Tim Daly and Pat Booth, who were their leaders, but they were as unsure as the rest. Watching them, Shaye knew they were going to make the wrong decision.
As their hands drifted to their guns he stepped forward and said, “Don’t even think about it!”
Suddenly, he was the center of attention. James turned away from the men he’d been collecting money from and looked at his father. Thomas stepped forward to stand with his father and Matthew. A moment later James joined them.
The ranch hands saw that their six to three advantage had now turned into five against four. They did not like the odds at all.
“It’s all over, boys,” Shaye said. “Pick up your friend and take him home. There’s no point in anyone getting seriously hurt over this.”
“Uh, Pa…” James said.
Shaye looked at his younger son, then said to the ranch hands, “Pay off your debts and then take your friend home.”
The five men were still unsure what to do, but another man had now entered the room, wearing a local badge rather than the Texas ones the Shayes were wearing.
“What’s goin’ on?” he demanded.
Dozens of men started talking at the same time, but Sheriff Stover spotted Shaye and his sons and walked over to them.
“Just a little misunderstanding, Sheriff, between my sons and some of your local hands,” Shaye said. “It turned into an arm wrestling match, and then a fight.”
Stover looked down at the fallen man and raised his eyebrows. Then he looked up at Matthew. “Your son put Lou Scales down?”
“With three punches!” James said proudly. “He beat him in arm wrestling, and then in the fight.”
Stover noticed the handful of money James was holding. “And there was betting goin’ on?”
“Just some friendly wagers, Sheriff,” Shaye said. “That’s not against the law, is it?”
Stover didn’t answer. Instead he looked over at Daly, Booth, and the others. “You boys better pay off your bets and get Lou out of here,” he said. “The rest of you go back to whatever you were doin’.”
Dora and Henri came running over to press themselves against James and Matthew.
“I might have figured you two were involved in this,” Stover said. “Always teasing those ranch hands.”
“It was Daly and them who started it, Sheriff,” the bartender said. “These three was just havin’ a drink and talkin’ to the girls.”
“Okay, thanks, Harve,” Stover said. “You might as well get back behind the bar.”
There was a lot of movement, shuffling of feet, shifting of tables and chairs, until the room looked almost back to normal.
“You boys figure on stickin’ around the saloon awhile?” Stover asked the three Shaye boys.
“They were just going to turn in for the night, Sheriff,” Shaye said. “Weren’t you, boys?”
“That’s right, Pa,” Thomas said.