She freed herself from his embrace with a sudden twist. Her breath went out in a little gasp. She looked over her shoulder once, and up at Thompson, and a wave of red swept up over her fresh young face and dyed it to the roots of her sunny hair. For a brief instant her hand lingered in Thompson's, bestowing a quick and tender pressure. Then she was gone up the bank with a bound like a startled deer.
Thompson turned. Ten yards out in the stream Tommy Ashe's red canoe drifted, and Tommy sat in the stern, his wet paddle poised as if he had halted it midway of a stroke, his body bent forward, tense as that of a beast crouched to spring.
The bow of the canoe grounded. Ashe laid down his paddle, stepped forward and ashore, hauling the craft's nose high with one hand. His gaze never left Thompson's face. He came slowly up, his round, boyish countenance white and hard and ugly, his eyes smoldering. Thompson felt his own face hardening into the same ugly lines. He felt himself threatened. Without being fully aware of his act he had dropped into a belligerent pose, head and shoulders thrust forward, one foot drawn back, hands clenched. This was purely instinctive. That Tommy Ashe had seen him kiss Sophie Carr and was advancing upon him in jealous fury did not occur to Thompson at all.
"You beggar," Ashe gritted, "is it part of your system of saving souls to kiss a girl as if—"
The quality of his tone would have stung a less sensitive man. With Sophie Carr's lip-pressure fresh and warm upon his own Thompson was in that exalted mood wherein a man is like an open powder keg. And Tommy Ashe had supplied the spark. A most unchristian flash of anger shot through him. His reply was an earnest, if ill-directed blow. This Tommy dodged by the simplest expedient of twisting his head sidewise without moving his body, and launched at the same time a return jab which neatly smacked against Thompson's jaw.
Tommy Ashe was wonderfully quick on his feet and a powerful man to boot. Moreover he had a certain dexterity with his fists. He was in deadly earnest, as a man is when matters of sex lead him to a personal clash. But he found pitted against him a man equally powerful, a man whose extra reach and weight offset the advantage in skill, a man who gave and took blows with silent ferocity.
Thompson, in all his carefully ordered life, had never fought. He fought now as if his life depended upon it. Each blow he gave and took brought to the surface a furious determination. He was not conscious of real pain, although he knew that his lips were cut and bleeding, that his cheeks were bruised and cut where Tommy Ashe's hard-knuckled fists landed with impressive force, that his heart pounded sickeningly against his ribs, and that every breath was a rasping gasp. Nor was he conscious of pity when he saw that Tommy Ashe was in no better case. It seemed fit and proper that they should struggle like that. There was a strange sort of pleasure in it. It seemed natural, as natural an act as he had ever performed. The shock of his clenched fist driven with all his force against the other man's body thrilled him, gave him a curious satisfaction. And that satisfaction took on a keener edge when Ashe clinched and they fell to the earth a struggling, squirming heap—for Thompson felt a tremendous power in his arms, in those arms covered with flat elastic bands of muscle hardened by weeks of axe-slinging, of heaving on heavy logs. He wrapped his arms about Ashe and tried to crush him.
One trial of that fierce grip enlightened Tommy Ashe. He broke loose from Thompson by a trick known to every man who has ever wrestled, and clawed away to his feet. Thereafter he kept clear of grips. Quick, with some skill at boxing, he could get home two blows to Thompson's one. But he could not down his man. Nor could Thompson. They struck and parried, circling and dodging, till their lungs were on fire, and neither had strength enough left to strike a telling blow.
The rage had gone out of them by then. It had become a dogged struggle for mastery. And failing that, there came a moment when they staggered apart and stood glaring at each other, choking for breath. As they stood, Tommy Ashe spoke first.
"You're a tough bird—for a parson."