第50章

"But you had hardly come out here before you began to attack me and you have never stopped.Out of all this earth's prosperity you have envied me my little share: you have tried to take away my school.With your own good name gone, you have wished to befoul mine.With no force of character to rise in the world, you have sought to drag me down.When I have avoided a brawl with you, preferring to live my life in peace with every man, you have said I was a coward, you unmanly slanderer! When I have desired to live the best life I could, you have turned even that against me.You lied and you know you lied--blackguard! You have laughed at the blood in my veins--the sacred blood of my mother--"His words choked him.The Scotch blood, so slow to kindle like a mass of cold anthracite, so terrible with heat to the last ashes, was burning in him now with flameless fury.

"I passed it all over, I only asked to go on my way and have you go yours.

But now--" He seemed to realize in an instant everything that he had suffered in consequence of O'Bannon's last interference in his affairs.He ground his teeth together and shook his head from side to side like an animal that had seized its prey.

"Get down!" he cried, throwing his head back."I can't fight you as an equal but I will give you one beating for the low dog you are."O'Bannon had listened immovable.He now threw the reins down and started to throw his leg over the saddle but resumed his seat."Let go!" he shouted."Iwill not be held and ordered."

The school-master tightened his grasp on the reins.

"Get down! I don't trust you."

O'Bannon held a short heavy whip.He threw this into the air and caught it by the little end.

The school-teacher sprang to seize it; but O'Bannon lifted it backward over his shoulder, and then raising himself high in his stirrups, brought it down.The master saw it coming and swerved so that it grazed his ear; but it cut into the wound on his neck with a coarse, ugly, terrific blow and the blood spurted.With a loud cry of agony and horror, he reeled and fell backward dizzy and sick and nigh to fainting.The next moment in the deadly silence of a wild beast attacking to kill, he was on his feet, seized the whip before it could fall again, flung it away, caught O'Bannon's arm and planting his foot against the horse's shoulder, threw his whole weight backward.The saddle turned, the horse sprang aside, and he fell again, pulling O'Bannon heavily down on him.

There in the blood-dyed dust of the old woodland street, where bison and elk, stag and lynx, wolf and cougar and bear had gored or torn each other during the centuries before; there on the same level, glutting their passion, their hatred, their revenge, the men fought out their strength--the strength of that King of Beasts whose den is where it should be: in a man's spirit.

A few afternoons after this a group of rough young fellows were gathered at Peter's shop.The talk had turned to the subject of the fight: and every one had thrown his gibe at O'Bannon, who had taken it with equal good nature.

>From this they had chaffed him on his fondness for a practical joke and his awkward riding; and out of this, he now being angry, grew a bet with Horatio Turpin that he could ride the latter's filly, standing hitched to the fence of the shop.He was to ride it three times around the enclosure, and touch it once each time in the flank with the spur which the young horseman took from his heel.

At the first prick of it, the high-spirited mettlesome animal, scarcely broken, reared and sprang forward, all but unseating him.He dropped the reins and instinctively caught its mane, at the same time pressing his legs more closely in against the animal's sides, thus driving the spur deeper.

They shouted to him to lie down, to fall off, as they saw the awful danger ahead; for the maddened filly, having run wildly around the enclosure several times, turned and rushed straight toward the low open doors of the smithy and the pasture beyond.But he would not release his clutch; and with his body bent a little forward, he received the blow of the projecting shingles full on his head as the mare shot from under him into the shop, scraping him off.

They ran to him and lifted him out of the sooty dust and laid him on the soft green grass.But of consciousness there was never to be more for him:

his jest had reached its end.