In the early days of his service with the Scarlet, when on detachment assignment with the end-of-rail crews that were building the Grand Trunk Pacific through the forests of British Columbia, he had witnessed rough-and-tumble bouts in logging camps, although this was his most active participation in one. Always the uniform had prevented his entry, even if he had been so inclined. Generally the crowd stepped in before the last breath had been crushed from the vanquished, and when the onlookers held back he had ordered festivities to cease. Twice within his knowledge, when he had been elsewhere, the crowd had waited too long and murder was the ugly result. In this rough-shod mill, he could not interfere.
His best chance seemed to lie in wearing down the self-crazed giant, then driving home a blow to chin or temple that would force a respite in which he might explain that the black-eyed Delores was nothing of interest in his clam-shell life. Childress began to spar with caution, playing for the logger's wind whenever he was within reach, but chiefly engaging himself in keeping out of the way.
As the minutes passed with no call of time, the sergeant's plan of campaign seemed to be succeeding. Larsen's breathing sounded like the wheeze of a bellows. If he knew anything of reserve, the logger was too angry to apply the knowledge. Evidently feeling the pace telling on him, he tore at the neck of his shirt with one hand, ripping off the buttons until there was exposed a chest as hairy as that of an ape. Then he rushed the harder. Long since he had abandoned the invective of his adopted English for what were probably more weighty curses in his mother tongue.
The sentiment of the onlookers at first had been with the Swede, but this now showed division. The loggers, pressed against the wall of the dance room that the fighters might have all the room they needed, were still with Larsen. But the stranger's game battle against odds of height, reach and weight was winning him supporters among the outlaw group at the open doorway. They did not hesitate to ejaculate pithy advice and encouragement.
Then suddenly, Larsen showed himself still capable of thought. Having edged toward the on-lookers, he lurched and seized a stool which had been vacated to give room. This he spun along the floor, torn and splintered by the spikes of countless boots, toward his advancing opponent. Catching Childress at the knees, it tripped him to a heavy fall. Lunging toward him came the Swede.
Objection from the outlaw spectators showed in a forward press, gasped invective and Bart Crowe's shouted warning:
"Look out there, he means to calk you!"
Already the angry jack's purpose showed in the lift of one spiked, heavy boot. Childress realized that there was not a second to spare.
Larsen meant to calk him—the most dreaded punishment of the West woods! In the thought flashes that come in moments of stress, he remembered men who had suffered the torture and lived through its years of after horror, with cheeks and forehead pitted as from disease, noses flattened, lips punctured—even with eyes gouged out.
The spiked boot was above his head now, about to be ground down into his face. He never had thought much of his looks, but he couldn't endure to be a horror to all who, perforce, should have to notice him.