The Mexican moved in fast, so fast that he should have been upon Ferd before that worthy could erect defenses.
However, the American was prepared. Ferd went backward in the one, two, three shuffle of the trained pugilist, his hands coming up in fists.
The Mexican was ardent but fighting out of his class as well as weight, height and reach. He swung once, twice, wildly. And then Ferd Zogbaum stepped in with a classic feint of the left and then a crushing blow into the other’s stomach with his right.
Bat Hardin, meanwhile, had found his feet again and turned to meet the rush of the other occupants of the bar. Unlike his companion, he adopted a crouching stance, his hands slightly forward and held as choppers, rather than fists. He had not spent his long years in the Asian War without compiling background in hand-to-hand combat.
The very number of the others, in the confined space of the cantina, was their handicap. That and the fact that the locals had been doing a considerable amount of drinking before the arrival of the strangers. They had the spirit of the thing completely, but precious little science. While his companion was finishing off his attacker, Bat was able to hold them although he was being pushed back by sheer weight.
Ferd yelled, “Let’s get out of here, Bat!”
But Bat was nearly eliminated from the fray at this point by an attack on his flank. The bartender, with something that looked like a child’s baseball bat in one of his fat paws, leaned over the bar and with surprising speed took a massive swing at the embattled American. Bat caught the motion from the side of his eye and tried to swing away from the blow but only partially succeeded and for a moment the fog seemed to roll in when the bludgeon struck him glancingly on the side of his head.
Ferd caught him, supported him just long enough for the other to shake his head in an attempt to clear it.
Swinging almost as wildly as the charging locals now, the two shuffled backward toward the swinging doors.
“I’ll try to hold them,” Ferd yelled. “Get the car door open!”
It was the obvious strategy. Bat turned quickly and made a dash for it. In the street, he straight-armed one of the loungers who had been outside and who was now coming up on the run, obviously attracted by the sounds of the battle. Another was coming from the opposite direction, a smallish youngster probably not out of his teens. However, Bat Hardin had neither time nor patience for compassion. He slugged the younger man in the face, putting him down, and tore his car keys from his pocket. He fumbled at the door’s lock, and felt arms grasping him from the rear. He reached back, snagged an arm and threw the other brutally over his shoulder in the old wrestler’s favorite hold, the Flying Mare.
Ferd Zogbaum erupted from the cantina and slammed the doors back into the faces of the enraged enemy.
The car door was open. Bat Hardin darted in and snaked across the seat to the driver’s position. Ferd was still holding the rapidly emerging local citizens, his arms swinging like windmills. Bat reached out and grabbed him by the belt and pulled him bodily inside in a sprawl.
The car began to move forward. Bat deliberately held down his speed so as not to seriously harm the two or three of the enemy who were immediately ahead, trying to stop him. They scurried to either side as he slowly speeded up. A few were already heaving rocks, which bounded off the car’s side.
Ferd had finally managed to sit erect and now slammed shut the still open door on his side. “Fun and games!” he yelped. “Get us the hell out of here, Bat. If any of those jokers are heeled, we’ve had it.”
Bat growled, “This is a converted police riot car. They’d have to have anti-tank guns.”
They were back on the main road leading out of town and to the site where New Woodstock was parked.
“Armored, eh?” Ferd said and then, “Hey, you’ve got a nasty cut on your head.” He pulled forth a handkerchief and handed it over. “This is clean.” Then he put a hand to his own head and groaned.
Bat Hardin, driving with one hand, held the handkerchief to the cut. “What the hell’s the matter?” he said. “If there’d been any gunfire, I’d say you’d copped one.”
“Splitting headache,” Ferd muttered. “I always get them, if I get into a fight.”
“By Christ,” Bat said bitterly. “I always thought of you as an easygoing character. What the hell was the idea of calling that guy a greaser? Haven’t you ever heard that a gentle answer turneth away rats?”
“Yeah, and you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make her,” Ferd groaned, still holding his head. “Listen, we had no more chance of getting out of that joint without a scrap than we have of flying without wings. Couldn’t you feel that in the air when we walked in? That bartender would have slipped us a mickey, if he’d had one handy. I just precipitated it before they got organized#longdash#thank God.”
“More of your feminine intuition?” Bat said in disgust. He dabbed at his head and looked at the handkerchief. He was bleeding profusely. “I’ll have to take this to Doc,” he growled.
They were approaching the camp site.
Ferd looked over his shoulder. “None of them coming#longdash#yet.”
“They won’t come,” Bat said, still in disgust. “There weren’t more than twenty or so of them, most of them tight. If we stuck around here for any length of time at all, they might stir up enough of the other townspeople to help them give us a hard time, but as of right now they’d be outnumbered. I suspect that the local cops, at this moment, are cooling them.”
He pulled up before the mobile town’s clinic.
Doc Barnes was sitting in a folding chair out front talking to his nurse who was also relaxed in the cool of the evening.
Ferd muttered, “This head is killing me. I’ll go over to my own place. See you later, Bat.” He stumbled from the vehicle, head still in hands, and staggered away.
II
New Woodstock had crossed the Rio Grande at McAllen and passed through the Mexican city of Reynosa.
There had been two fairly major sites on the American side of the border with excellent facilities for as many as ten thousand homes apiece but Bat Hardin and the executive committee had checked to find that the next nearest site was at Linares, a full 254 kilometers to the southwest. They wanted to push on through and avoid the necessity of setting up for the night at some second class or emergency site where there would be inadequate supply facilities and other shortcomings. There would be enough of that when they got down into Central America and beyond.
The committee had handled all the required border formalities the day before so that there was nothing to hold them up. Bat Hardin leading, as usual, they strung out along the highway, some füve hundred homes strong, with the auxiliary vehicles spaced periodically between them. Most of the homes were drawn by fairly modern electro-steamers but when you were dealing with even five hundred mobile homes you could hardly expect very often to get through one whole day without some needed minor repairs.
The stretch from Reynosa to the little town of China, where they branched off onto a side road so as to avoid the large city, of Monterrey, was excellent enough. Above ground, of course, and not automated as would have been an American road of this size, but adequate. Even the Pan American Highway was far from completely automated and this was not the Pan American Highway as yet. They’d join that further south.
Bat rode alone in his converted police vehicle, drawing his moderately-sized mobile home behind. He was far from a misogynist but at this junction in his life he had no permanent feminine affiliations and, for some reason not quite clear to even himself, he desired none. He was a fairly tall man with a military carriage and a habitually worried expression. His hair was crisp, his complexion dark and his features so heavy that he would hardly have been thought of as handsome by average American standards. He had a nervous habit of gnawing on his underlip at the slightest of problems.