“What I thought you’d do,” remarked Johnny, seizing his wrist and twisting the stick away. “Now get up. Come on!”
Mr. Butson sat and gasped. He fingered his nose gently, and found it very tender, and bleeding. He seemed to have met a thunderbolt in the dark. He turned slowly over on his knees, and so got on his feet.
“Hit me—come, hit me!” called Johnny, sparring at him. “Fancy I’m only my mother, you cur! Come, I’m hitting you—see! So!” He seized the man by the ear, twisted it, and rapped him about the face. The treatment would have roused a sheep. Butson sprang at Johnny, grappled with him, and for a moment bore him back. Johnny asked nothing better. He broke ground, checked the rush with half-arm hits, and stopped it with a quick double left, flush in the face.
It was mere slaughter; Johnny was too hard, too scientific, too full of cool hatred. The wretched Butson, bigger and heavier as he might be, was flaccid from soft living, and science he had none. But he fought like a rat in a corner—recking nothing of rule, but kicking, biting, striking, wrestling madly; though to small purpose: for his enemy, deadly calm and deadly quick, saw every movement ere it was made, and battered with savage precision.
“Whenever you’ve had enough,” said Johnny, as Butson staggered, and leaned against the wall, “you can stop it, you know, by calling the p’lice. You like the p’lice. There’s always one of ’em in the next street, an’ you’ve only to shout. I shall hammer you till ye do!”
And he hammered. A blow on the ear drove Butson’s head against the wall, and a swing from the other fist brought it away again. He flung himself on the ground.
“Get up!” cried Johnny. “Get up. What, you won’t? All right, you went down by yourself, you know—so’s to be let alone. But I’m coming down too!” and with that he lay beside Butson and struck once more and struck again.
“Chuck it!” groaned Butson. “I’m done! Oh! leave me alone!”
“Leave you alone?” answered Johnny, rising and reaching for his jacket. “Not I. You didn’t leave my mother alone a soon as she asked you, did you? I’ll never pass you again without clouting your head. Come home!”
He hauled the bruised wretch up by the collar, crammed his hat on his head and cut him across the calves with his own walking stick. “Go on! March!”