As they assaulted him, en masse, he seized a chair, and swung
it flail-like about his head. For a few moments, there was a crashing
of glass and china, and a clatter of furniture and a chaos of struggle.
At its center, he stood wielding his impromptu weapon, and, when two of
his assailants had fallen under its sweeping blows, and Farbish stood
weakly supporting himself against the table and gasping for the breath
which had been choked out of him, the mountaineer hurled aside his
chair, and plunged for the sole remaining man. They closed in a clinch.
The last antagonist was a boxer, and when he saw the Kentuckian advance
toward him empty-handed, he smiled and accepted the gauge of battle. In
weight and reach and practice, he knew that he had the advantage, and,
now that it was man to man, he realized that there was no danger of
interference from Horton. But Samson knew nothing of boxing. He had
learned his fighting tactics in the rough-and-tumble school of the
mountains; the school of "fist and skull," of fighting with hands and
head and teeth, and as the Easterner squared off he found himself
caught in a flying tackle and went to the floor locked in an embrace
that carried down with it chairs and furniture. As he struggled and
rolled, pitting his gymnasium training against the unaccustomed assault
of cyclonic fury, he felt the strong fingers of two hands close about
his throat and lost consciousness.
Samson South rose, and stood for a moment panting in a scene of
wreckage and disorder. The table was littered with shivered glasses and
decanters and chinaware. The furniture was scattered and overturned.
Farbish was weakly leaning to one side in the seat to which he had made
his way. The men who had gone down under the heavy blows of the chair
lay quietly where they had fallen.
Wilfred Horton stood waiting. The whole affair had transpired with
such celerity and speed that he had hardly understood it, and had taken
no part. But, as he met the gaze of the disordered figure across the
wreckage of a dinner-table, he realized that now, with the
preliminaries settled, he who had struck Samson in the face must give
satisfaction for the blow. Horton was sober, as cold sober as though he
had jumped into ice-water, and though he was not in the least afraid,
he was mortified, and, had apology at such a time been possible, would
have made it. He knew that he had misjudged his man; he saw the
outlines of the plot as plainly as Samson had seen them, though more
tardily.