“She’s not.”
“She is.”
For a pause they eyed each other. Though their friendship had survived, nay, had been cemented by many a quarrel, never before had a disagreement gone such lengths.
“Look here, Billy.” Seyd spoke more mildly. “This won’t do. She’s got to go.”
“Not till you’ve shown me—not now,” he hastily added, as Seyd began to strip. “I’d hate to hit a cripple, and—”
“Come on.”
But, ducking a swing, Billy gave ground, genuine concern on his face. “No, no, old man! You are still weak. Let it go for another week. That left fin of yours—”
Landing at that precise moment on his ear, however, the member in question proved its convalescence and ended the argument by toppling him sideways. Up in a second, he closed, and for the next ten minutes they went at it, clinching and breaking, jabbing and hooking, with an energy and science that would have filled the respective souls of a moralist and a prize-fighter with disgust and delight. Avoiding both of these extreme viewpoints, the account may very well be given in the terms used by Caliban in describing the affair next day to one of his compañeros, a charcoal-burner.
“Like mad bulls they go at it, grappling and tearing, each striking the other so that the thud of their blows raise the echoes. It is in the very beginning that the Red Cabeza fells Don Roberto, but instead of splitting his head with the spade that stands close by—was ever such folly!—he helps him up from the ground. I then think it the finish, but no, they go at it again, hailing blows in the face hard as the kick of a mule, and so it continues for a time with only pauses to catch their breath. I am beginning to wonder will it ever come to an end when—crack! sharp as the snap of thy whip and so swift that I do not see the blow, it comes. The Red Cabeza lies there quietly on the ground. Believe it or not, Pedro, he is knocked senseless by a blow of the hand.”
The immediate consequences may also be left to Caliban. “Their quarrel, as I have said, is over Carmelita, the dove of Chilpancin, and I now expect to see Don Roberto take her for his own. That she is of the same mind is proven when she comes running with her knife for him to finish up the Red Cabeza. But again, no! who shall understand these gringos?—he gives her the sharpest of looks.