"Stop it, kid! You might as well send me a pitcher postcard that it's comin'. You got to hit from where you are—you can't stop to draw back. Use your left more. G'wan now, mix it! Mix it!"
They would mix it until the boy was panting. Then while he sat on a beer keg until he should be in breath again the unwinded Spike would skip the rope—a girl's skipping rope—or shadow-box about the room with intricate dance steps, raining quick blows upon a ghostly boxer who was invariably beaten; or with smaller gloves he would cause the inflated bag to play lively tunes upon the ceiling of its support. After an hour of this, when both were sweating, they would go to a sheltered spot beyond the shed to play cold water upon each other's soaped forms.
There had been six weeks of this before the boy's dreadful secret was revealed to Winona; six weeks before he appeared to startle her with one eye radiating the rich hues of a ripened eggplant. It had been simple enough. He had seen his chance to step in and punish Spike, and he had stepped—and Spike's straight left had been there.
"You handed yourself that one, kid," Spike had said, applying raw beef to it after their rubdown.
Wilbur had removed the beef after leaving the store. He didn't want the thing to go down too soon. It was an honourable mark, wasn't it? Nothing to make the fuss about that Winona had made. Of course you had to go to Pegleg McCarron's to do the boxing, but Spike had warned him never to drink if he expected to get anywhere in this particular trade; not even to smoke. That he had entirely abandoned the use of tobacco at Spike's command should—he considered—have commended his hero to Winona's favourable notice. He wore the eye proudly in the public gaze; regretted its passing as it began to pale into merely rainbow tints.
But Winona took steps. She was not going to see him die, perish morally, without an effort to save him. She decided that Sharon Whipple would be the one to consult. Sharon liked the boy—had taken an interest in him. Perhaps words in time from him might avert the calamity, especially after her father had refused to be concerned.
"Prize fighting!" said the judge, scornfully. "What'll he be doing next? Never settles down to anything. Jack-of-all-trades and good at none."
It was no use hoping for help from a man who thought fighting was foolish for the boy merely because he would not earnestly apply himself to it.
She went to Sharon Whipple, and Sharon listened even more sympathetically than she had hoped he would. He seemed genuinely shocked that such things had been secretly going on in the life of his young friend. He clicked deprecatingly with his tongue as Winona became detailed in her narrative.
"My great glory!" he exclaimed at last. "You mean to say they mix it down there every afternoon?"