"They're wrastlin'," announced the Father. "So don't be alarmed. And Mr. Gamboni's out there, and he'll not see bloodshed!"
"I don't worry!" boasted Johnnie. "Cis, what makes y' talk the way y' do? Barber, he can't lick a cowboy!"
"Y' pesky critter!"—this from the hall, in unmistakable westernese.
"Y' hear?" joyously demanded Johnnie, recognizing One-Eye's voice. "Y' hear, Father Pat? Oh, I don't have t' look! I know how it's goin'! I can see it! One-Eye's got him down! He's hammerin' him good!—Oh, go for him, One-Eye! Go for him! Go for him!"
Slap! slap! slap!
To judge from these sounds, the cowboy was carrying out Johnnie's wish. So with that rapt look, and that moving of the nostrils which betokened excited day-dreaming, Johnnie gladdened himself with a soul-satisfying picture of the contest: Big Tom prone on his face, spent, helpless, cowering, pleading, bleeding, while the dashing One-Eye rained blow after blow upon him—bing! bing! bing! ("Makin' a meal outen him," as the man from the West would say). Next, he saw the longshoreman stretched upon a bed of pain, admitting all of his shortcomings to Father Pat in weak whispers.
It was all so real to Johnnie that he fell to pitying Big Tom!
He pitied him more as the scene changed swiftly to that of a funeral (Barber's, of course), at which he—Johnnie—in a new suit, with Cis beside him, made one carriageful in an extended line of carriages, all rolling circumspectly along. That One-Eye's plight, under such circumstances, might be trying, to say the least, Johnnie forgot to consider, wholly passing over the small matter of an inquiry on the part of the police authorities! What he did anticipate, however, was a flat that, in the future, would be a peaceful, happy, quiet place—the home of just Grandpa, Cis, and himself.
"Oh, Father Pat, by now One-Eye's dead!" wailed Cis. "Oh, why didn't some one stop them! Oh! Oh, dear!"
This interruption to Johnnie's visioning was followed by a loud laugh, and the turning of the hall doorknob. Johnnie raised himself on an elbow, lifting a hopeful face. "One-Eye!" he cried. "Hooray! Hooray!"