George Dunaway turned red. The scorching afternoon was suddenly quiet. The teamsters, scenting trouble, gathered around. Someone laughed, a jeering laugh probably intended for Jack Drumm.
"Miss Larkin," Drumm said coolly, "perhaps you and Mrs. Glore had better get your things together now. Lieutenant Dunaway will see you safely to Prescott and your uncle—that is, if Indians on foot do not overwhelm him on the way!"
He was being deliberately insufferable; he knew it, and he enjoyed it. Dunaway's insolence and contempt, added to the other indignities he had experienced since coming to the Territory, drove him to it. Besides, Miss Larkin was watching the exchange with interest. Jack Drumm was not used to being put down at all, even less before an attractive female. Satisfied, he turned on his heel in curt dismissal of the U. S. Army and its fumbling attempts to deal with the rebellious Agustín. But Dunaway cleared his throat and said, "Just a minute!"
Surprised, Drumm turned.
"Corporal Bagley," Dunaway said to the brigand, "I ask you to witness that George Dunaway, Sixth Cavalry, U. S. Army, Fort Whipple, near Prescott, is now going off duty. Whatever happens next has got nothing to do with the Army." Carefully he unpinned the silver bars from his shoulders and removed the collar insignia from his sweat-stained shirt. "I've got plenty of leave coming. There's nothing in Army regulations says I can't take some right here and now, is there?"
"No, sir!" Bagley said joyously, accepting the insignia in a horny palm. "Being company clerk, I can swear to that, if there's any fuss about it later!"
The grinning men ringed Drumm and Dunaway. From the corner of his eye Drumm saw Miss Phoebe Larkin put a slender hand over her mouth; the blue eyes widened.
"Leave?" Drumm asked, puzzled. "Whatever for?"
Dunaway rolled up his sleeves. "I guess," he said, "old Agustín tried to rearrange that fancy waxed mustache of yours, Drumm, but he didn't do a proper job. Maybe I can finish it for him." One booted foot planted solidly forward, he raised clenched fists. "Put up your hands! I'm going to give you the thrashing you've been spoiling for!"
Drumm was startled. The lieutenant was a roughneck, an uncouth and uncurried frontier character; no credit at all to the finer traditions of the Army. But though he did not believe in brawling, Drumm would have to give the braggart a boxing lesson. He himself had once gone five rounds in Birmingham with the great Jem Mace, the fighter who had won the middleweight title in '61. Mace was old then, and slow, but had praised Jack Drumm's agility and quick hands.
"You don't mean it!" he said incredulously.
"Put up your hands," Dunaway insisted, "or I'll wear you out with a willow switch!"
Drumm struck the classic pose Jem Mace had taught him.
"All right, then—come at me!"
Cautiously they circled each other. Dunaway feinted with his left hand and Drumm stepped easily inside the wide-swinging right cross that followed. At the same time he jolted Dunaway's chin with a short uppercut. He could have hit harder, but did not want to hurt the lieutenant.
Stunned, Dunaway crouched and came forward like a turtle, chin tucked below his shoulder; he stabbed outward with a jab. Drumm waited till the jab was committed, then swung a quick left to the pit of the lieutenant's stomach. Again he moderated the punch, but it was enough to make Dunaway grunt and stagger back.
"Come again!" Drumm taunted. "Have another go at it, why don't you?" Jem Mace, he felt, would have been proud of him.
Abandoning caution, the lieutenant rushed forward, both fists swinging. Expertly Drumm stepped aside, elbows pulled close to his body and clenched fists protecting his face, coolly waiting out the blind rush. But this time something went wrong, dreadfully wrong. As Drumm trod on a gopher tunnel (Geomyidae Thomomys, he remembered dismally) the earth gave way under him and he toppled backward.
According to the Queensberry rules, he was entitled to a count of ten to recover his footing. But Dunaway rushed forward and threw himself on Drumm, knees crushing the wind from his chest, hands groping for the throat. Locked together in what Drumm assumed was frontier style, the two rolled muddily on the ground while spectators cheered and made bets.
"Middlesex Regiment, is it?" Dunaway snarled. "Know how to handle Indians better, do they?" Fingers twined around Drumm's neck, he lifted Drumm's head high and banged it repeatedly on the damp earth, uttering cavalry obscenities all the while. "There, take that! And that! You Englishmen are so damned good at handling things—handle that now!"
He banged Drumm's head down so hard that planets, constellations, a complete zodiac, reeled through his skull. Eggleston, seeing his master abused, ran to help him. Corporal Bagley reached out a languid paw and caught him by the collar.
"Had enough?" Dunaway jeered.
With his wind cut off he could not respond. The world dimmed, turned black. "Guess that'll teach you!" Dunaway panted, relaxing his hold.
Drumm lay winded like a beached salmon while Dunaway casually retrieved his insignia to the cheers of the B Company rowdies. Eggleston tried to help his master rise but Drumm waved him away and staggered to his feet, aware that Miss Phoebe Larkin was regarding him pityingly. That hurt more than his defeat at the hands of George Dunaway.
"It wasn't fair!" he gasped, spitting out a foreign object that proved to be a tooth. "The rules say—"
"No rules out here, no rules at all!" Dunaway casually tucked in a shirttail. "As to what's fair, Drumm—depends on where you come from. Nothing out here is fair—the Apaches aren't fair, the weather isn't fair, the whole damned Arizona Territory is the unfairest thing you ever saw, and it's no place for a weakling that comes along whimpering about fair! Arizona is for men—men that scratch and claw their way and stick it out no matter what the weather, or the Indians, or the Lord God Himself!" Dunaway turned toward Miss Phoebe Larkin and her companion. "Is that your baggage, ladies? Corporal, take the valises and put them in the lead wagon, will you?"
Drumm watched the corporal pick up the bags. He was afraid he would add to his humiliation by vomiting. "Now that we've settled our little score," Dunaway said conversationally, getting again into the saddle, "there was a Pinkerton man named Meech, Alonzo Meech, left Phoenix about the same time you did, Drumm. Hasn't been heard from, and the home office has been making inquiries. Seen him around?"
Jack Drumm's throat hurt; he spoke hoarsely.
"Meech was with us when Agustín hit our camp. Next morning he rode out toward Prescott; said he had business there."
"The Apaches probably got him," Dunaway remarked, brushing dust from his shirt where he had lately rolled on the ground with Jack Drumm.
"I doubt it." Drumm shook his head, wincing as his maltreated neck pained him. "Mr. Meech was an extremely determined man, and very resourceful."
Phoebe Larkin and Mrs. Glore were in whispered consultation, appearing concerned about something. The older woman kept insisting, but Phoebe continued to shake her head and say, "No, no, Beulah!"
"Well, ladies?" Dunaway asked.
The corporal was handing up the luggage into the wagon when Phoebe snatched at his sleeve. "I—just a minute, please!"
The brigand stared at her, then at his lieutenant.
"Ma'am," Dunaway asked, "what is the matter?"
Miss Larkin seemed distraught. "I—we've changed our mind, Lieutenant. We won't be going to Prescott after all."
"Not going to Prescott? But—"
"No." She was very firm. Taking the bags from the corporal, she set them down in the dust. "I think the journey will be too rough—in the wagon, I mean!" She looked nervously about, seeming at a loss for words, a condition that Jack Drumm had not before observed in her. Finally she said, almost desperately, "My friend here—Mrs. Beulah Glore—has a liver condition. A shaking-up, like she might get in a freight wagon, could aggravate her condition."