"So!" Jan grunted like a satisfied hog, "I feex you like that in one meenute, me."
The red jumped from John Flint's cheeks to his eyes, and stayed there. Why, this hulking brute had hurt Kerry! His breath exhaled in a whistling sigh. He seemed to coil himself together; with a tiger-leap he launched himself at the great hulk before him. It went down. It had to.
I know every detail of that historic fight. Is it not written large in the Book of the Deeds of Appleboro, and have I not heard it by word of mouth from many a raving eye-witness? Does not Dr. Walter Westmoreland lick his lips over it unto this day?
A long groaning sigh went up from the onlookers. Meester Fleent was a great and a good man; but he was a crippled man. Death was very close to him.
Big Jan was not too drunk to fight savagely, but he was in a most horrible rage, and this weakened him. He meant to kill this impudent fellow who had taken Michael away from him before he had half-finished with him. But first he would break every bone in the crippled man's body, take him in his hands and break his back over one knee as one does a slat. A man with one leg to balk him, Big Jan? That called for a killing. Jan had no faintest idea he might not be able to make good this pleasant intention.
It was a stupendous fight, a Homeric fight, a fight against odds, which has become a town tradition. If Jan was formidable, a veritable bison, his opponent was no cringing workman scared out of his wits and too timid to defend himself. John Flint knew his own weakness, knew what he could expect at Jan's hands, and it made him cool, collected, wary, and deadly. He was no more the mild-mannered, soft-spoken Butterfly Man, but another and a more primal creature, fighting for his life. Big Jan, indeed, fancied he had nobody but the Butterfly Man to deal with; as a matter of fact he was tackling Slippy McGee.
Skilled, watchful, dangerous, that old training saved him. Every time Jan came to his feet, roaring, thrashing his arms like flails, making head-long, bull-like rushes, the Butterfly Man managed to send him sprawling again. Then he himself caught one well-aimed blow, and went staggering; but before slow-moving and raging Jan could follow up his advantage, with a lightning-like quickness the Butterfly Man made a battering ram of his head, caught Jan in the pit of the stomach, and even as he fell Jan went down, too, and went down underneath. Desperately, fighting like a fiend, John Flint kept him down. And presently using every wrestler's trick that he knew, and bringing to bear every ounce of his saved and superb strength, in a most orderly, businesslike, cold-blooded manner he proceeded to pound Big Jan into pulp. The devil that had been chained these seven years was a-loose at last, rampant, fully aroused, and not easily satisfied. Besides, had not Jan most brutally and wantonly tried to kill Kerry!
If it was a well deserved it was none the less a most drastic punishment, and when it was over Big Jan lay still. He would lie prone for many a day, and he would carry marks of it to his grave.
When the tousled victor, with a reeling head, an eye fast closing, and a puffed and swollen lip, staggered upright and stood swaying on his feet, he found himself surrounded by a great quiet ring of men and women who regarded him with eyes of wonder and amaze. He was superhuman; he had accomplished the impossible; paid the dreaded Boss in his own coin, yea, given him full measure to the running over thereof! No man of all the men Jan had beaten in his time had received such as Jan himself had gotten at this man's hands to-day. The reign of the Boss was over: and the conqueror was a crippled man! A great sighing breath of sheer worshipful admiration went up; they were too profoundly moved to cheer him; they could only stand and stare. When they wished, reverently, to help him, he waved them aside.
"Where's my dog?" he demanded thickly through his swollen lips. "Where's Kerry? If he's dead—" he cast upon fallen Jan a menacing glare.