Like a wounded buffalo, with his head down and blind with rage, the Yankee went for Snap, and, in spite of a well-meant upper cut from that youngster, managed to close with him, and by sheer weight bore him to the ground. There Snap was helpless, and before the big cattle-man could interfere the boy had a couple of lumps on his face, which bore witness to the good-will with which Mr. Hackett had used his beringed fists. But for Snap himself, Mr. Rufus E. H. would there and then have received a sound hiding from the cattle-man, but, though somewhat unsteady on his feet, Snap pleaded that he might have his man left to himself.
Again Hackett tried the rushing game, this time only to meet the boy's left and then blunder over his own legs on to his nose. As the fight went on, Snap recovered from his heavy punishment. Quick as a cat on his feet, he never again let the big man close with him. Every time he stirred to strike, Snap's left hand went out like an arrow from the bow, true to its mark, on one or other of Hackett's eyes. Not once did the boy use his right—that quick-countering left was all that seemed necessary; and, though the American was more game than his appearance would have led his friends to believe, it was evident before the end of the third round that he was at the boy's mercy. From that moment Snap held his hand, simply taking care of himself and getting out of his enemy's way, and carefully abstaining from administering that brutal coup de grâce which a less generous nature would have inflicted.
'Say, mate,' quoth one of the cowboys who was Hackett's second, 'it's not much use foolin' around here, is it? You can't see the Britisher, and he don't seem to cotton to hitting a blind man. Let's have a drink and be friends.'
Almost before he could answer, Snap had the fellow by the hand with a hearty English grip.
'You'll allow we're the same breed now, Mr. Hackett, won't you?' he said. 'It wasn't really a fair fight, you know, because I've learnt boxing, and you haven't.'
In spite of a bumptiousness which acts on a Britisher like a gadfly on a horse, your real American is a right good fellow at bottom; and for the rest of the two days during which Hackett and Snap travelled together nothing could exceed the kindness of the beaten man and his fellow-countrymen to the three English lads.
'He isn't much account,' apologised one of the cattle-men, 'just a school-teaching dude from the Eastern States, I reckon; but you mustn't bear him any malice for hitting you when you were down; there ain't any Queensberry rules out here in a row, and it's no good appealing to the referee on a Western prairie.'
Snap had no intention of bearing malice, nor, indeed, of fighting any more fights, either according to Queensberry rules or the rough-and-tumble rules of the prairie, if he could avoid it, though this one fight was for him an exceedingly lucky event.
Soon after leaving the scene of his encounter the train pulled up at Wapiti, and was met by a man in the roughest of clothes, driving the rudest of carts. He had come for the 'farm pups' from England, he said, and if they weren't blamed quick with their luggage he was not going to wait for them. An offhand sort of person, thought Snap, but, no doubt, when his master, Mr. Jonathan Brown, is near, he will be a good deal more civil. It was not until months later that Snap learnt that this dirty rough, a common farm-labourer in all but his ignorance of farming, was Mr. Jonathan Brown, 'professor of ranching and mixed farming in all its branches.'
When Frank and Towzer had vanished out of sight Snap turned from the window with a sigh, and found the good-natured eyes of the bearded cattleman fixed inquiringly upon him.