“What you laughin’ at?” Simmons demanded.
“Oh, all them people,” the other managed to get out between gasps.
“All what people?”
“Why, back there waitin’ and lookin’ for us. Waitin’ to see a bloody nose. And here we sit, laughin’ at ’em!”
“Well, if you’re going to make so much noise they’ll soon find us,” Simmons observed. But he grinned in spite of himself. It was funny. He could see Peter Boley and Slim Pearl and the rest running around like chickens with their heads cut off.
“It’s queer we should both come to the same spot,” observed Mr. Notter presently. “One of life’s calm incidents.”
That was the way Simmons understood it at first, then he realized that the other had meant to say “coincidences.” He nodded in agreement. But another thought was occupying his mind, and after a moment he gave it speech.
“You know,” he said abruptly, “if I was an ex-champion I think I’d just as soon fight as not.”
“So would I,” chuckled Mr. Notter.
“But you are,” Simmons objected in surprise.
“You mean what I told old Boley,” the other grinned. “I was just stringin’ him. I used to belong to an athletic club, all right. Up in Columbus.”
“Then you wasn’t a fighter?”
“Not so as you could notice it.”
Silence. Simmons cursed himself mentally. This was the kind of man he had run away from! A liar and braggart! A bag of wind! He, Jone Simmons, man of science, absolute master of the punching bag, had run away from this little, white-faced city dry-goods clerk!
“Of course,” he said contemptuously, “then it’s not much wonder you was afraid to fight.”
“I didn’t say I was afraid,” returned Mr. Notter, glancing at him. “I just didn’t want to.”
“Well, it’s easy enough to see why you didn’t want to.”
“I don’t know whether it is or not.”
“I do.”
“I don’t.”
Simmons opened his mouth to say “I do” again, but reflected that the remark would seem pointless on repetition. He substituted another—
“Anyhow, you run away.”
“I suppose you didn’t,’ retorted Mr. Notter sarcastically.
“That’s my business.”
“And mine’s mine.”
“If I did come away it wasn’t because I was afraid of you, I tell you that!”
Mr. Notter laughed coldly. “No,” he returned, “I suppose you was afraid of the greased pig.”
Simmons rose to his knees, trembling a little. “Are you lookin’ for trouble?” he demanded.
“What if I am?” retorted the other crushingly.
“I say, are you lookin’ for trouble?”
“And I say what if I am?”
“You coward, you, are you lookin’ for trouble?”
Mr. Notter’s face grew suddenly red. “I’m a coward, am I?” His voice was raised hoarsely. “That’s a lie!”
There was a silence. A tense, pendent silence, while the two men, glaring at each other, breathed heavily. And then, surprising even himself by the suddenness of it, Jone Simmons lunged forward and swung at Mr. Notter’s jaw. A vicious, full swing, and it nearly hit him.
“You would, would you?” Mr. Notter cried furiously, leaping to his feet. Simmons followed him. But before he could get set for another blow Mr. Notter had reached out and grasped his hair with both hands, jerking with all his strength.
“Wow!” screamed Simmons, tears of pain starting to his eyes. He drew back his right foot and delivered a well-placed-kick on the other’s shin. It had the desired effect. He felt the grasp on his hair loosen.
The next moment he had jumped forward to throw his arms around Mr. Notter’s neck, and together the two men went to the ground in a savage embrace.
They landed with Simmons on top, but Mr. Notter somehow got hold of his ear and pulled him beneath, wriggling out from under. Both were kicking frantically, and Simmons managed to get a hand fastened in the other’s hair. He was at a disadvantage there, for Mr. Notter’s scalp was not sensitive.
Over and over they rolled on the grass from one side of the clearing to the other and back again, pulling hair, scratching, kicking, both boiling with rage. Once they rolled against a tree, knocking Simmons’s head against the trunk, and he thought the other had hit him.
“You damn coward!” he yelled.
He released his hold around his opponent’s neck, doubled his fists and pushed them savagely against Mr. Notter’s nose. That brought first blood for Simmons, and moved Mr. Notter, wild with fury, to superhuman efforts. He wriggled on top and pinned Simmons down with his knees, and began raining blows all over his face.
More blood. Simmons felt it on his face and thought he was being killed. With a sudden mighty upheaving of his body he unseated his opponent and sent him tumbling to one side, and then rolled over on top of him.
Again they closed in an embrace, each with his fingers fastened in the other’s hair.
“Leggo my hair!” screamed Simmons in agony.
“You leggo mine!” yelled Mr. Notter in return.
Simmons pulled harder, but it was quite evident even to his frenzied brain that his opponent’s scalp was the toughest part of him. Accordingly, he released his hold on Mr. Notter’s hair and gripped his nose instead. He clutched the nose, sore and bleeding, with the fingers of both hands, and jerked it savagely from right to left and back again.
Mr. Notter emitted a fearful yell, but pulled harder on the hair, rolling over meantime so that he was on top. In desperate fury Simmons let go of the nose and closed his fingers around the other’s throat.
“Let go my hair!” he screamed again, blinded with tears.
Mr. Notter began to gurgle, and his grasp weakened. They began to roll again, first one on top and then the other, mad with frenzy. Simmons got his knuckles against Mr. Notter’s eye and bored in with them, twisting his fist from side to side. Mr. Notter jerked away and butted his forehead against Simmons’s nose, causing the blood to spurt afresh.
Simmons let out an awful oath and began pounding his opponent’s face with both fists — his eyes, his nose, his mouth. They rolled over once, twice, toward a tree at the edge of the clearing, Mr. Notter coming out on top.
They were both about exhausted by that time, and the end would have come soon in any event, but the chance of their rolling close to the tree hastened it.
Mr. Notter reached out again for Simmons’s hair; Simmons, anticipating the maneuver, closed his fingers firmly around the other’s nose; Mr. Notter jerked violently backward to free himself, his head struck against the trunk of the tree, and he rolled over limp and unconscious.
For a moment Simmons didn’t know what had happened. But as he saw his opponent lying there beside him still and motionless, comprehension came, and he was seized with a sudden, terrible fright. He scrambled frantically to his feet. Mr. Notter was dead! He had killed him! Good heavens! He stood looking at the prostrate form in speechless horror, scarcely able to keep on his feet from fatigue and the exhaustion of rage—
“Here they are!” came a sudden shout from behind.
Simmons jumped half out of his skin, whirled around and saw a man pushing his way through the shrubbery into the clearing. It was Peter Boley.
“Here they are!” Boley shouted again, and Simmons heard answering calls from the wood in all directions.
The grocer entered the clearing, and his glance fell on the form of Mr. Notter on the ground; as he looked it stirred a little.
“Here they are!” he shouted a third time. “Come quick! Quick! Jonas has knocked him out!”
Toward noon of the following day Peter Boley and Jone Simmons were seated talking in the back room of the hardware store. Simmons looked considerably the worse for wear. His nose was swollen to twice its usual size, there was a bandage over one eye and innumerable scratches made his face look something like a railroad map.