Then a yell from twenty throats and the rush was on again. At first, anticipating the easy triumph which their type so love, the toughs had turned from the milder fun of frightening a girl of the better class to the momentary work of thrashing the solitary man who had interfered with that simple amusement. Now, bleeding faces, swollen eyes and more than one fractured jaw and nose had transformed the earlier phase of rough spirits into one of murderous rage.
The man who had so mercilessly punished them must not be allowed to escape alive. The tough never fights fair. When fists fail, a gouge, bite or kick is considered quite allowable. When, as in the present instance, the intended victim is so protected as to render these tactics difficult of success, pockets are usually ransacked for more formidable weapons.
Ansel’s arrival on the scene had but checked the onrush. No two men, big and powerful as both were, could subdue nor hold out against that assault.
Clive struck, right, left, with the swiftness of thought. And each blow crashed into yielding, reeling flesh.
Down whirled Ansel’s chair on the bullet head of one man, and down went the man beneath the impact.
Up whirled the chair and again it descended on another head—descended and shivered into kindling wood.
Dropping the fragments, Karl ranged close to Clive and together the two struck out, the one with the wild force and fury of a kicking horse, the other with the colder but no less terrific accuracy of the trained athlete.
A tough, ducking one of Ansel’s wild swings, ran in and caught him about the waist. Doubling his left leg under him, Karl caught the man’s stomach with the point of his knee. The assailant collapsed, gasping. But the momentary lapse of the tall New Englander’s fistic attack had opened a breach through which two more men rushed and flung themselves bodily on him.
Clive, unaware of his ally’s plight, yet felt the increased impetus of the onslaught on himself, and had to rally his every faculty to withstand it. His breath was coming hard from his heaving chest, and his head swam with fatigue and excitement. More than one heavy blow had reached his face and body. Then——
“Clear the way there, youse!” howled an insane, mumbling voice “Lemme at ’im! I’ll pay ’im for this smashed jaw!”