Smith saw it in a moment; he had been trapped. But it was too late. The match was made and the money was up; there was no chance to retrace, even if Smith had wanted. As a fact to his glory, however, he had no desire so to do.
“We're up against the Essleins, Bill,” Smith said to his trainer; “and it's all right. I didn't want to make a match with them, because I got their chickens queer. And if I'd fought them and won, I'd felt like I'd got their money queer; and that I couldn't stand. But this is different. We'll fight the Essleins now they're here, and 'if they can win over me, they're welcome.”
Then the main began. The first battle was short, sharp, deadly; and glorious for Smith. The Esslein chicken got a stab in the heart the first buckle. Smith smiled as his handler pulled his chicken's gaff out of its dead victim, and set it free.
The Smith entries won the second and third battle. Triumph rode on the glance of Smith, while the Esslein brows were bleak and dark.
“Smith's got the 'Esslein Games,' sure!” was whispered about the pit.
In the fourth and fifth battles the tide ran the other way, the Esslein chickens killing their rivals. Each battle, for that matter, had so far been to the death.
The sixth battle went to Smith and the seventh to the Essleins. Thus it stood four for Smith to three for the Essleins, just before the eighth battle. It didn't look as if Smith could lose.
It was at this juncture so hopeful for the coops of Smith, that Smith did a foolish thing. Yielding to the appeals of his trainer, Smith let that worthy man put up a chicken of his own to face the Esslein entry for the eighth duel. It was a gorgeous shawl-neck that Smith's trainer produced; eye bright as a diamond, and beak like some arrow-head of jet. His legs looked as strong as a hod-carrier's. It was a horse to a hen, so everybody said, that the Esslein chicken,—which was but a small, indifferent bird,—would lose its life, the battle, and the main at one and the same time.
Popular conjecture was wrong, as popular conjecture often is. The Esslein chicken locked both gaffs through the shawl-neck's brain in the second buckle.
“That teaches me a lesson,” said Smith. “Hereafter should an angel come down from heaven and beg me to let him fight a chicken in a main of mine, I'll turn him down!”