Cock-eyed Grace sounded the challenge.
“Now, you little Sheeny Rose,” she said, “I’m goin’ to do ye fer shuttin’ of me out o’ Nigger Martha’s wake.”
With that out came her hatpin, and she made a lunge at Sheeny Rose. The other was on her guard. Hatpin in hand, she parried the thrust and lunged back. In a moment the girls had made a ring about the two, shutting them out of sight. Within it the desperate women thrust and parried, backed and squared off, leaping like tigers when they saw an opening. Their hats had fallen off, their hair was down, and eager hate glittered in their eyes. It was a battle for life; for there is no dagger more deadly than the hatpin these women carry, chiefly as a weapon of defense in the hour of need.
They were evenly matched. Sheeny Rose made up in superior suppleness of limb for the pent-up malice of the other. Grace aimed her thrusts at her opponent’s face. She tried to reach her eye. Once the sharp steel just pricked Sheeny Rose’s cheek and drew blood. In the next turn Rose’s hatpin passed within a quarter-inch of Grace’s jugular.
But the blow nearly threw her off her feet, and she was at her enemy’s mercy. With an evil oath the fiend thrust full at her face just as the policeman, who had come through the crowd unobserved, so intent was it upon the fight, knocked the steel from her hand.
At midnight two disheveled hags with faces flattened against the bars of adjoining cells in the police station were hurling sidelong curses at each other and at the maddened doorman. Nigger Martha’s wake had received its appropriate and foreordained ending.
A CHIP FROM THE MAELSTROM
“The cop just sceert her to death, that’s what he done. For Gawd’s sake, boss, don’t let on I tole you.”