Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man Part 24

But what could we do? Jan was so efficient a foreman that Inglesby's power was always behind him. So when Jan chose to get very drunk, and sang long, monotonous songs, particularly when he sang through his teeth, lugubriously:

"_Yeszeze Polska nie Zginela Poki my Zygemy_ ..."

men and women trembled. Poland might not be lost, but somebody's skin always paid for that song.

In pa.s.sing one morning--it was a holiday--through the Poles' quarters, an unpleasant enough stretch which other folks religiously avoided, the b.u.t.terfly Man heard shrieks coming from Michael Karski's back yard. It was Michael's wife and children who screamed.

"It is the Boss who beats Michael, Meester Fleent," a man volunteered.

"The Boss, he is much drunk. Karski's woman, she did not like the ways of him in her house, and Michael said, 'I will to send for the police.' So Big Jan beats Michael, and Michael's woman, she hollers like h.e.l.l."

John Flint knew inoffensive, timid Michael; he knew his broad-bosomed, patient, cowlike wife, and he liked the brood of shockheaded youngsters who plodded along patient in old clothes, bare-footed, and with scanty enough food. He had made a corn-cob doll for the littlest girl and a cigar-box wagon with spool wheels for the littlest boy.

Perhaps that is why he turned and went with the rest to Michael's yard where Big Jan was knocking Michael about like a ten-pin, grunting through his teeth: "Now! Sen' for those policemens, you!"

Michael was no pretty thing to look upon, for Jan was in an uglier mood than usual, and Michael had greatly displeased him; therefore it was Michael's turn to pay. n.o.body interfered, for every one was horribly afraid Big Jan would turn upon _him_. Besides, was not he the Boss, and could he not say Go, and then must not a man go, short of pay, and with his wife and children crying? Of a verity!

The b.u.t.terfly Man slipped off his knapsack and laid his net aside.

Then he pushed his way through the scared onlookers.

"Meester Fleent! For G.o.d's love, save my man, Meester Flint!"

Michael's wife Katya screamed at him.

By way of answer Meester Fleent very deliberately handed her his eye-gla.s.ses. Then one saw that his eyes, slitted in his head, were cold and bright as a snake's; his chin thrust forward, and in his red beard his lips made a straight line like a clean knife-cut. Two bright red spots had jumped into his tanned cheeks. His lean hands balled.

He said no word; but the crumpled thing that was Michael was of a sudden plucked bodily out of Big Jan's hands and thrust into the waiting woman's. The astonished Boss found himself confronting a pale and formidable face with a pair of eyes like glinting sword-blades.

Kerry had followed his master, and was now close to his side. For the moment Flint had forgotten him. But Big Jan's evil eyes caught sight of him. He knew the b.u.t.terfly Man's dog very well. He snickered. A huge foot shot out, there was a howl of anguish and astonishment, and Kerry went flying through the air as if shot from a catapult.

"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 b.u.t.terfly Man, but another and a more primal creature, fighting for his life. Big Jan, indeed, fancied he had n.o.body but the b.u.t.terfly 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 b.u.t.terfly 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 b.u.t.terfly 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 p.r.o.ne 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.

"Your dog's in bed with the baby, and Ma's give him milk with brandy in it, and he drank it and growled at her, and the boys is holding him down now to keep him from coming out to you, and he ain't much hurt nohow," squealed one of Michael's big-eyed children.

John Flint, stretching his arms above his head, drew in a great gulping mouthful of air, exhaled it, and laughed a deepchested, satisfied laugh, for all he was staggering like a drunken man. Here Michael's wife Katya came puffing out of her house like a traction engine--such was the shape in which nature formed her--and falling on her knees, caught his hand to her vast bosom, weeping like the overflowing of a river and blubbering uncouth sounds.

"Get up, you crazy woman!" snarled John Flint, his face going brick-red. "Stop licking my hand, and get up!" Although he did not know it, Katya symbolized the mental att.i.tude of every laborer in Appleboro toward him from that hour.

"Here's Doctor Westmoreland! And here comes the po-lice!" yelled a boy, joyous with excitement.

Westmoreland cast one by no means sympathetic glance at the wreck on the ground, and his big arms went about John Flint; his fingers flew over him like an apprehensive father's.

"What's all this? Who's been fighting here, you people?" demanded the town marshal's brisk voice. "Big Jan? And--good Lord! _Mister Flint!_"

His eyes bulged. He looked from Big Jan on the ground to the b.u.t.terfly Man under Westmoreland's hands, with an almost ludicrous astonishment.

"I'm sure sorry, Mr. Flint, if I have to give you a little trouble for awhile, but--"

"But you'll be considerably sorrier if you do it," said Dr. Walter Westmoreland savagely. "You take that hulk over there to the jail, until I have time to see him. I can't have him sent home to his wife in that shape. And look here, Marshal: Jan got exactly what he deserved; it's been coming to him this long time. If Inglesby's bunch tries to take a hand in this, _I'll_ try to make Appleboro too hot to hold somebody. Understand?"

The marshal was a wise enough man, and he understood. Inglesby's pet foreman had been all but killed, and Inglesby would be furiously angry. But--Mr. Flint had done it, and behind Mr. Flint were powers perhaps as potent as Inglesby's. One thing more may have influenced the marshal: The hitherto timid and apathetic people had merged into a compact and ominous ring around the b.u.t.terfly Man and the doctor. A shrill murmur arose, like the wind in the trees presaging a storm.

There would be riot in staid Appleboro if one were so foolish as to lay a detaining hand upon John Flint this day. More yet, the beloved Westmoreland himself would probably begin it. Never had the marshal seen Westmoreland look so big and so raging.

"All right, Doctor," said he, hastily backing off. "I reckon you're man enough to handle this."

Some proud worshiper brought Mr. Flint his hat, knapsack, and net, and the mountainous Katya insisted upon tenderly placing his gla.s.ses upon his nose--upside down. Westmoreland used to say afterward that for a moment he feared Flint was going to bite her hand! Then man and dog were placed in the doctor's car and hurried home to my mother; who made no comment, but put both in the larger Guest Room, the whimpering dog on a comfort at the foot of his master's bed. Kerry had a broken rib, but outside of this he was not injured. He would be out and all right again in a week, Westmoreland a.s.sured his anxious master.

"Oh, you _man_, you!" crowed Westmoreland. "John, John, if anything were needed to make me love you, this would clinch it! Prying open nature's fist, John, having b.u.t.terflies bear your name, working hand in glove with your government, boosting boys, writing books, are all of them fine big grand things. But if along with them one's man enough to stand up, John, with the odds against him, and punish a bully and a scoundrel, the only way a bully and a scoundrel can feel punishment, that's a heart-stirring thing, John! It gets to the core of my heart.

It isn't so much the fight itself, it's being able to take care of oneself and others when one has to. Yes, yes, yes. A fight like that is worth a million dollars to the man who wins it!"

Westmoreland may be president of the Peace League, and tell us that force is all wrong. Nevertheless, his great-grandmother was born in Tipperary.

We kept the b.u.t.terfly Man indoors for a week, while Westmoreland doctored a viciously black eye and sewed up his lip. Morning and afternoon Appleboro called, and left tribute of fruit and flowers.

"Gad, suh, he behaved like one of Stonewall Jackson's men!" said Major Cartwright, pridefully. "No yellow in _him_; he's one of _us_!"

At nights came the Polish folks, and these people whom he had once despised because they "hadn't got sense enough to talk American," he now received with a complete and friendly understanding.

"I just come by and see how you make to feel, Meester."

"Oh, I feel fine, Joe, thank you."

There would be an interval of absolute silence, which, did not seem to embarra.s.s either visited or visitor. Then:

"Baby better now?" Meester would ask, interestedly.

"That beeg doctor, he oil heem an' make heem well all right."

After awhile: "I mebbe go now, Meester."

"Good-night," said the host, briefly.