But it was well that the visor of Toppy’s cap hid his eyes, else Reivers might have wondered at the look that flashed up at him from them.
“Throw ’em in!” snapped Reivers, and the handlers thrust the three combatants, stripped to the waists but wearing calked lumberjack shoes, through the ropes.
A cry went up to the sky from a hundred and fifty throats around the ringside—a cry that had close kinship with the joyous, merciless “Au-rr-ruh” of a wolf about to make its kill. Then an instant’s silence as the rudely handled fighters came to their feet and faced for action. Then another hideous yelp rent the still air; the fighters had come together!
“Queer ring-costumes, eh, Treplin?” came Reivers’ voice mockingly. “Our own rules; the feet as well as the hands. Lord, what oxen!”
The two Slavs had sprung upon their despoiler like two maddened cattle. Sheedy, rushing to meet them, head down, swung right and left overhand; and with a mighty smacking of hard fist on naked flesh, one Torta rolled on the ground while his brother stopped in his tracks, his arms pressed to his middle. The crowd bellowed.
“Yes, I knew Sheedy had been a pug,” said Reivers judicially.
Sheedy deliberately took aim and swung for the jaw of the man who had not gone down. The Slav instinctively ducked his head, and the blow, slashing along his jawbone, tore loose his ear. Half stunned, he dropped to his knees, and Sheedy stepped back to poise for a killing kick. But now the man who had been knocked down first was on his feet, and with the scream of a wounded animal he hurled himself through the air and went down, his arms close-locked around Sheedy’s right leg. Sheedy staggered. The ring became a little hell of distorted human speech. Sheedy bellowed horrible curses as he beat to a pulp the face that sought to bury itself in his thigh; his assailant screeched in Slavish terror; and the bull-like roar of his brother, rising to his feet with cleared senses and springing into the battle, intermingled with both. Sheedy’s red face went pale.
Around the ringside the faces of the Slavs shone with relief. The fight was going their way; they roared encouragement and glee in their own guttural tongue. The others—Irish, Americans, Scandinavians—rooting for Sheedy only because he was of their breed, were silent.
“Hang tough, Bill,” said one man quietly; and then in a second the slightly superior brains in Sheedy’s head had turned the battle. Like a flash he dropped flat on his back as his fresh assailant reached out to grip him. The furious Slav followed him helplessly in the fall; and a single gruff, appreciative shout came from the few “white men.”
For they had seen, even as the Slav stumbled, Bill Sheedy’s left leg shoot up like a catapult, burying the calked shoe to the ankle in the man’s soft middle and flinging him to one side, a shuddering, senseless wreck. The man with his arms around Sheedy’s leg looked up and saw. He was alone now, alone against the big man who had knocked him down with such ease. Toppy saw the man’s mouth open and his face go yellow.