His words choked him. The Scotch blood, so slow to kindle like a mass of
cold anthracite, so terrible with heat to the last ashes, was burning in him
now with flameless fury.
"I passed it all over, I only asked to go on my way and have you go yours.
But now--" He seemed to realize in an instant everything that he had
suffered in consequence of O'Bannon's last interference in his affairs. He
ground his teeth together and shook his head from side to side like an
animal that had seized its prey.
"Get down!" he cried, throwing his head back. "I can't fight you as an equal
but I will give you one beating for the low dog you are."
O'Bannon had listened immovable. He now threw the reins down and started to
throw his leg over the saddle but resumed his seat. "Let go!" he shouted. "I
will not be held and ordered."
The school-master tightened his grasp on the reins.
"Get down! I don't trust you."
O'Bannon held a short heavy whip. He threw this into the air and caught it
by the little end.
The school-teacher sprang to seize it; but O'Bannon lifted it backward over
his shoulder, and then raising himself high in his stirrups, brought it
down. The master saw it coming and swerved so that it grazed his ear; but it
cut into the wound on his neck with a coarse, ugly, terrific blow and the
blood spurted. With a loud cry of agony and horror, he reeled and fell
backward dizzy and sick and nigh to fainting. The next moment in the deadly
silence of a wild beast attacking to kill, he was on his feet, seized the
whip before it could fall again, flung it away, caught O'Bannon's arm and
planting his foot against the horse's shoulder, threw his whole weight
backward. The saddle turned, the horse sprang aside, and he fell again,
pulling O'Bannon heavily down on him.
There in the blood-dyed dust of the old woodland street, where bison and
elk, stag and lynx, wolf and cougar and bear had gored or torn each other
during the centuries before; there on the same level, glutting their
passion, their hatred, their revenge, the men fought out their strength--the
strength of that King of Beasts whose den is where it should be: in a man's
spirit.
A few afternoons after this a group of rough young fellows were gathered at
Peter's shop. The talk had turned to the subject of the fight: and every one
had thrown his gibe at O'Bannon, who had taken it with equal good nature.
From this they had chaffed him on his fondness for a practical joke and his
awkward riding; and out of this, he now being angry, grew a bet with Horatio
Turpin that he could ride the latter's filly, standing hitched to the fence
of the shop. He was to ride it three times around the enclosure, and touch
it once each time in the flank with the spur which the young horseman took
from his heel.