The Best of Robert E. Howard, Volume 2 Page 23

  I went into him like a whirlwind, lamming head on full into that left jab again and again, trying to get to him, but always my swings were short. Them jabs wasn’t hurting me yet, because it takes a lot of them to weaken a man. But it was like running into a floating brick wall, if you get what I mean. Then he started crossing his right – and oh, baby, what a right he had! Blip! Blim! Blam!

  His rally was so unexpected and he hit so quick that he took me clean off my guard and caught me wide open. That right was lightning! In a second I was groggy, and Francois beat me back across the ring with both hands going too fast for me to block more than about a fourth of the blows. He was wild for the kill now and hitting wide open.

  Then the ropes was at my back and I caught a flashing glimpse of him, crouching like a big tiger in front of me, wide open and starting his right. In that flash of a second I shot my right from the hip, beat his punch and landed solid to the button. Francois went down like he’d been hit with a pile driver – the referee leaped forward – the gong sounded!

  As I went to my corner the crowd was clean ory-eyed and not responsible; and I saw Francois stagger up, glassy-eyed, and walk to his stool with one arm thrown over the shoulder of his handler.

  But he come out fresh as ever for the third round. He’d found out that I could hit as hard as he could and that I was dangerous when groggy, like most sluggers. He was wild with rage, his smile was gone, his face dead white again, his eyes was like black fires – but he was cautious. He side-stepped my rush, hooking me viciously on the ear as I shot past him, and ducking when I slewed around and hooked my right. He backed away, shooting that left to my face. It went that way the whole round; him keeping the right reserved and marking me up with left jabs while I worked for his body and usually missed or was blocked. Just before the gong he rallied, staggered me with a flashing right hook to the head and took a crushing left hook to the ribs in return.

  ________

  The fourth round come and he was more aggressive. He began to trade punches with me again. He’d shoot a straight left to my face, then hook the same hand to my body. Or he’d feint the left for my face and drop it to my ribs. Them hooks to the body didn’t hurt much, because I was hard as a rock there, but a continual rain of them wouldn’t do me no good, and them jabs to the face was beginning to irritate me. I was already pretty well marked up.

  He shot his blows so quick I usually couldn’t block or duck, so every time he’d make a motion with the left I’d throw my right for his head haphazard. After rocking his head back several times this way he quit feinting so much and began to devote most of his time to body blows.

  Now I found out this about him: he had more claws than sand, as the saying goes. I mean he had everything, including a lot of stuff I didn’t, but he didn’t like to take it. In a mix-up he always landed three blows to my one, and he hit about as hard as I did, but he was always the one to back away.

  Well, come the seventh round. I’d taken plenty. My left eye was closing fast and I had a nasty gash over the other one. My ribs was beginning to feel the body punishment he was handing out when in close, and my right ear was rapidly assuming the shape of a cabbage. Outside of some ugly welts on his torso, my dancing partner had only one mark on him – the small cut on his chin where I’d landed with my bare fist earlier in the evening.

  But I was not beginning to weaken for I’m used to punishment; in fact I eat it up, if I do say so. I crowded Francois into a corner before I let go. I wrapped my arms around my neck, worked in close and then unwound with a looping left to the head.

  Francois countered with a sickening right under the heart and I was wild with another left. Francois stepped inside my right swing, dug his heel into my instep, gouged me in the eye with his thumb and, holding with his left, battered away at my ribs with his right. The referee showed no inclination to interfere with this pastime, so, with a hearty oath, I wrenched my right loose and nearly tore off Francois’ head with a torrid uppercut.

  His sneer changed to a snarl and he began pistoning me in the face again with his left. Maddened, I crashed into him headlong and smashed my right under his heart – I felt his ribs bend, he went white and sick and clinched before I could follow up my advantage. I felt the drag of his body as his knees buckled, but he held on while I raged and swore, the referee would not break us, and when I tore loose, my charming playmate was almost as good as ever.

  He proved this by shooting a left to my sore eye, dropping the same hand to my aching ribs and bringing up a right to the jaw that stretched me flat on my back for the first time that night. Just like that! Biff – bim – bam! Like a cat hitting – and I was on the canvas.

  Tom Roche yelled for me to take a count, but I never stay on the canvas longer than I have to. I bounced up at “Four!” my ears still ringing and a trifle dizzy, but otherwise O.K.

  Francois thought otherwise, rushed rashly in and stopped a left hook which hung him gracefully over the ropes. The gong!

  The beginning of the eighth I come at Francois like we’d just started, took his right between my eyes to hook my left to his body – he broke away, spearing me with his left – I followed swinging – missed a right – crack!

  He musta let go his right with all he had for the first time that night, and he had a clear shot to my jaw. The next thing I knowed, I was writhing around on the canvas feeling like my jaw was tore clean off and the referee was saying: “–seven –”

  Somehow I got to my knees. It looked like the referee was ten miles away in a mist, but in the mist I could see Francois’ face, smiling again, and I reeled up at “nine” and went for that face. Crack! Crack! I don’t know what punch put me down again but there I was. I beat the count by a hair’s breadth and swayed forward, following my only instinct and that was to walk into him!

  Francois might have finished me there, but he wasn’t taking any chances for he knowed I was dangerous to the last drop. He speared me a couple of times with the left, and when he shot his right, I ducked it and took it high on my forehead and clinched, shaking my head to clear it. The referee broke us away and Francois lashed into me, cautious but deadly, hammering me back across the ring with me crouching and covering up the best I could.

  On the ropes I unwound with a venomous looping right, but he was watching for that and ducked and countered with a terrible left to my jaw, following it with a blasting right to the side of the head. Another left hook threw me back into the ropes and there I caught the top rope with both hands to keep from falling. I was swaying and ducking but his gloves were falling on my ears and temples with a steady thunder which was growing dimmer and dimmer – then the gong sounded.

  I let go of the ropes to go to my corner and when I let go I pitched to my knees. Everything was a red mist and the crowd was yelling about a million miles away. I heard Francois’ scornful laugh, then Tom Roche was dragging me to my corner.

  “By golly,” he said, working on my cut up eyes, “you’re sure a glutton for punishment; Joe Grim had nothin’ on you.

  “But you better lemme throw in the towel, Steve. This Frenchman’s goin’ to kill you –”

  “He’ll have to, to beat me,” I snarled. “I’ll take it standin’.”

  “But, Steve,” Tom protested, mopping blood and squeezing lemon juice into my mouth, “this Frenchman is –”

  But I wasn’t listening. Mike knowed I was getting the worst of it and he’d shoved his nose into my right glove, growling low down in his throat. And I was thinking about something.

  One time I was laid up with a broken leg in a little fishing village away up on the Alaskan coast, and looking through a window, not able to help him, I saw Mike fight a big gray devil of a sled dog – more wolf than dog. A big gray killer. They looked funny together – Mike short and thick, bow-legged and squat, and the wolf dog tall and lean, rangy and cruel.

  Well, while I lay there and raved and tried to get off my bunk with four men holding me down, that blasted wolf-dog cut poor old Mike to ribbons.
He was like lightning – like Francois. He fought with the slash and get away – like Francois. He was all steel and whale-bone – like Francois.

  Poor old Mike had kept walking into him, plunging and missing as the wolf-dog leaped aside – and every time he leaped he slashed Mike with his long sharp teeth till Mike was bloody and looking terrible. How long they fought I don’t know. But Mike never give up; he never whimpered; he never took a single back step; he kept walking in on the dog.

  At last he landed – crashed through the wolf-dog’s defense and clamped his jaws like a steel vise and tore out the wolf-dog’s throat. Then Mike slumped down and they brought him into my bunk more dead than alive. But we fixed him up and finally he got well, though he’ll carry the scars as long as he lives.

  And I thought, as Tom Roche rubbed my belly and mopped the blood off my smashed face, and Mike rubbed his cold, wet nose in my glove, that me and Mike was both of the same breed, and the only fighting quality we had was a everlasting persistence. You got to kill a bulldog to lick him. Persistence! How’d I ever won a fight? How’d Mike ever won a fight? By walking in on our men and never giving up, no matter how bad we was hurt! Always outclassed in everything except guts and grip! Somehow the fool Irish tears burned my eyes and it wasn’t the pain of the collodion Tom was rubbing into my cuts and it wasn’t self-pity – it was – I don’t know what it was! My grandfather used to say the Irish cried at Benburb when they were licking the socks off the English.

  Then the gong sounded and I was out in the ring again playing the old bulldog game with Francois – walking into him and walking into him and taking everything he handed me without flinching.

  I don’t remember much about that round. Francois’ left was a red-hot lance in my face and his right was a hammer that battered in my ribs and crashed against my dizzy head. Toward the last my legs felt dead and my arms were like lead. I don’t know how many times I went down and got up and beat the count, but I remember once in a clinch, half-sobbing through my pulped lips: “You gotta kill me to stop me, you big hash!” And I saw a strange haggard look flash into his eyes as we broke. I lashed out wild and by luck connected under his heart. Then the red fog stole back over everything and then I was back on my stool and Tom was holding me to keep me from falling off.

  “What round’s this comin’ up?” I mumbled.

  “The tenth,” he said. “For th’ luvva Pete, Steve, quit!”

  I felt around blind for Mike and felt his cold nose on my wrist.

  “Not while I can see, stand or feel,” I said, deliriously. “It’s bulldog and wolf – and Mike tore his throat out in the end – and I’ll rip this wolf apart sooner or later.”

  Back in the center of the ring with my chest all crimson with my own blood, and Francois’ gloves soggy and splashing blood and water at every blow, I suddenly realized that his punches were losing some of their kick. I’d been knocked down I don’t know how many times, but I now knew he was hitting me his best and I still kept my feet. My legs wouldn’t work right, but my shoulders were still strong. Francois played for my eyes and closed them both tight shut, but while he was doing it I landed three times under the heart, and each time he wilted a little.

  “What round’s comin’ up?” I groped for Mike because I couldn’t see.

  “The eleventh – this is murder,” said Tom. “I know you’re one of these birds which fights twenty rounds after they’ve been knocked cold, but I want to tell you this Frenchman is –”

  “Lance my eyelid with your pocket-knife,” I broke in, for I had found Mike. “I gotta see.”

  Tom grumbled, but I felt a sharp pain and the pressure eased up in my right eye and I could see dim-like.

  Then the gong sounded, but I couldn’t get up; my legs was dead and stiff.

  “Help me up, Tom Roche, you big bog-trotter,” I snarled. “If you throw in that towel I’ll brain you with the water bottle!”

  With a shake of his head he helped me up and shoved me in the ring. I got my bearings and went forward with a funny, stiff, mechanical step, toward Francois – who got up slow, with a look on his face like he’d rather be somewhere else. Well, he’d cut me to pieces, knocked me down time and again, and here I was coming back for more. The bulldog instinct is hard to fight – it ain’t just exactly courage, and it ain’t exactly blood lust – it’s – well, it’s the bulldog breed.

  Now I was facing Francois and I noticed he had a black eye and a deep gash under his cheek bone, though I didn’t remember putting them there. He also had welts a-plenty on his body. I’d been handing out punishment as well as taking it, I saw.

  Now his eyes blazed with a desperate light and he rushed in, hitting as hard as ever for a few seconds. The blows rained so fast I couldn’t think and yet I knowed I must be clean batty – punch drunk – because it seemed like I could hear familiar voices yelling my name – the voices of the crew of the Sea-Girl, who’d never yell for me again.

  I was on the canvas and this time I felt that it was to stay; dim and far away I saw Francois and somehow I could tell his legs was trembling and he shaking like he had a chill. But I couldn’t reach him now. I tried to get my legs under me, but they wouldn’t work. I slumped back on the canvas, crying with rage and weakness.

  Then through the noise I heard one deep, mellow sound like an old Irish bell, almost. Mike’s bark! He wasn’t a barking dog; only on special occasions did he give tongue. This time he only barked once. I looked at him and he seemed to be swimming in a fog. If a dog ever had his soul in his eyes, he had; plain as speech them eyes said: “Steve, old kid, get up and hit one more blow for the glory of the breed!”

  I tell you, the average man has got to be fighting for somebody else besides hisself. It’s fighting for a flag, a nation, a woman, a kid or a dog that makes a man win. And I got up – I dunno how! But the look in Mike’s eyes dragged me off the canvas just as the referee opened his mouth to say “Ten!” But before he could say it –

  In the midst I saw Francois’ face, white and desperate. The pace had told. Them blows I’d landed from time to time under the heart had sapped his strength – he’d punched hisself out on me – but more’n anything else, the knowledge that he was up against the old bulldog breed licked him.

  I drove my right smash into his face and his head went back like it was on hinges and the blood spattered. He swung his right to my head and it was so weak I laughed, blowing out a haze of blood. I rammed my left to his ribs and as he bent forward I crashed my right to his jaw. He dropped, and crouching there on the canvas, half supporting himself on his hands, he was counted out. I reeled across the ring and collapsed with my arms around Mike, who was whining deep in his throat and trying to lick my face off.

  The first thing I felt on coming to was a cold, wet nose burrowing into my right hand, which seemed numb. Then somebody grabbed that hand and nearly shook it off and I heard a voice say: “Hey, you old shellback, you want to break a unconscious man’s arm?”

  I knowed I was dreaming then, because it was Bill O’Brien’s voice, who was bound to be miles away at sea by this time. Then Tom Roche said: “I think he’s comin’ to. Hey, Steve, can you open your eyes?”

  I took my fingers and pried the swollen lids apart and the first thing I saw, or wanted to see, was Mike. His stump tail was going like anything and he opened his mouth and let his tongue loll out, grinning as natural as could be. I pulled his ears and looked around and there was Tom Roche – and Bill O’Brien and Mushy Hansen, Olaf Larsen, Penrhyn, the first mate, Red O’Donnell, the second – and the Old Man!

  “Steve!” yelled this last, jumping up and down and shaking my hand like he wanted to take it off, “you’re a wonder! A blightin’ marvel!”

  “Well,” said I, dazed, “why all the love fest –”

  “The fact is,” bust in Bill O’Brien, “just as we’re about to weigh anchor, up blows a lad with the news that you’re fightin’ in the Napoleon Club with –”

  “–and as soon as I heard who you
was fightin’ with I stopped everything and we all blowed down there,” said the Old Man. “But the fool kid Roche had sent for us loafed on the way –”

  “–and we hadda lay some Frenchies before we could get in,” said Hansen.

  “So we saw only the last three rounds,” continued the Old Man. “But, boy, they was worth the money – he had you outclassed every way except guts – you was licked to a frazzle, but he couldn’t make you realize it – and I laid a bet or two –”

  And blow me, if the Old Man didn’t stuff a wad of bills in my sore hand.

  “Halfa what I won,” he beamed. “And furthermore, the Sea-Girl ain’t sailin’ till you’re plumb able and fit.”

  “But what about Mike?” My head was swimming by this time.

  “A bloomin’ bow-legged angel,” said the Old Man, pinching Mike’s ear lovingly. “The both of you kin have my upper teeth! I owe you a lot, Steve. You’ve done a lot for me, but I never felt so in debt to you as I do now. When I see that big French ham, the one man in the world I would of give my right arm to see licked –”

  “Hey!” I suddenly seen the light, and I went weak and limp. “You mean that was –”

  “You whipped Tiger Valois, heavyweight champion of the French fleet, Steve,” said Tom. “You ought to have known how he wears dude clothes and struts amongst the swells when on shore leave. He wouldn’t tell you who he was for fear you wouldn’t fight him; and I was afraid I’d discourage you if I told you at first and later you wouldn’t give me a chance.”

  “I might as well tell you,” I said to the Old Man, “that I didn’t know this bird was the fellow that beat you up in Manila. I fought him because he kicked Mike.”