“And we’ll play it through,” Sam insisted.
“Sure! Only—only,”—Herman hesitated—“only it’s curious, Sam, how long this row with the rest of the class keeps up.”
“Well, we didn’t start it, but we can stand it as long as the other fellows can. They can let us alone, and we can let them alone—and that’s all there is to it.”
But “letting alone” is not always an easy course, in affairs either great or small. So Sam was convinced when he heard of the battle between Tom Orkney and Scrub Payne, who, it will be recalled, had blacked Poke’s eye in the early stages of the feud. Orkney had vowed to avenge his friend, and had not forgotten his pledge. Accordingly, when he came upon Poke and Payne in the middle of an excited group, and heard loud sounds of dispute, he shouldered a way through the press and was just in time to see Scrub cuff the smaller boy.
Orkney caught Scrub’s arm and half turned him in his tracks.
“Take somebody of your size!” he challenged. “Cut out this hazing the kids!”
At that Poke flamed in wrath against his ally. “Kid yourself, Orkney!” he roared. “Say, you keep out of this! I can do my own fighting.”
“All right, fight me—afterward,” said Orkney coolly. “Don’t bother me now, though. I’ve had a date with this fellow for a good while, and I’m going to keep it.”
Payne did not shun combat. Indeed, he hastened it; for he struck Orkney sharply in the chest. Tom, who had been vigilantly watching for just such an overture, countered heavily on Scrub’s forehead. The crowd fell back at once, leaving space for the opponents; and in another instant the fight was in full progress.
In weight there was little advantage on either side, though Payne had greater height and longer reach. Neither was a highly skilled boxer. The one great point in Orkney’s favor was a certain grim determination which counted amazingly in helping him endure punishment, of which, it must be confessed, he took a deal, largely because he was so bent on inflicting it. It was, in short, a “hammer and tongs” affair, as Poke subsequently described it to Sam, with Orkney playing for the other’s head and bent on repaying Poke’s blackened eye in kind; with no rounds, with scant thought of the rules. Long the issue hung in the balance. So well matched were the two, in fact, that many of the onlookers supposed Payne was at least holding his own, when, suddenly, he threw an arm over his sorely battered face, whipped about, and took to his heels, leaving Tom an undisputed victor, but one who manifestly had had to pay for his victory.