At the same time he whipped out his six-shooter and pulled the trigger, but his marksmanship was bad, for Bill had caught him by his throat from the side and pulled his body over so that the bullet crashed through the roof, instead of boring a hole through Jack’s body.
Expecting that the remaining chambers would be emptied in the struggle which took place between Bill and Black Pete the crowd dropped to the floor, jumped behind the bar, crawled under tables—all except René and he kept his trained bear between himself and the business end of the gun the bad man of Circle and the Harlem boy were struggling for.
These latter two were well matched though there was no doubt but that Black Pete who was the larger was also the stronger, but sheer brute strength could not gain the mastery where the tricks of the wrestler’s art are brought to bear and Bill had a little the best of it.
As the crowd rightly guessed when the first shot was fired, Black Pete did pull the trigger every chance he got until all of his cartridges were shot off but each time the bullet that was intended for Bill went wild and neither he nor the others were scratched. One bullet, though, shivered the big plate glass mirror over the bar into a thousand pieces and Doc Marling, the proprietor, knew that he was having bad luck just then to the jig-time of three hundred dollars, even if it didn’t keep on for the next seven years.
All the time the struggle was under way Jack stood by as though he was watching a friendly bout in Prof. William Adam’s Academy on Manhattan Street in the good old days. More than one of the onlookers wondered why he didn’t crack a bottle on Black Pete’s head and so help out his partner, but this was not the way the boys did team work. In a set-to of any kind whether it was with bare knuckles, with knives or with pistols neither one would take a hand in the affair the other was engaged in unless, as Jack had once explained to me, it was “absolutely imperative.”
And this status of the fray was far from having come to pass, at least that was the way Jack sized it up. The crowd must have kept count of the shots fired for when the last one took place they quickly picked themselves up from the floor, or crawled out from their safety-first hiding places, and gathered around Bill and Black Pete who were still at it.
Whether it was due to the final breaking down of his courage, failing strength, too much hootch or the superior tactics of the trained athlete, was not apparent, but slowly Bill overpowered his opponent, threw him over his shoulder, when he struck the floor on his back, and pinned him down so that he could not move. After all had seen that Black Pete was helpless Bill let him up.
There was wild cheering for the victor and some one brought Bill a big glass of forty-rod.
“You have well earned it boy and you need it,” he said as he offered the glass to him.
“I never drink,” said Bill and it was given instead to Black Pete to revive him again.