The Guarded Heights Part 3

"By no means. I wouldn't feel comfortable fighting a man like you. I'd never dreamed we had such a rotten person on the place. Oh, no, Morton.

I'm going to give you a good horse-whipping."

George's chin went out. His momentary good-humour fled.

"If you touch me with that whip I'm likely to kill you."

Without hesitating Lambert raised the whip. George sprang and got his hands on it, intent only on avoiding a blow that would have carried the same unbearable sting as Sylvia's riding crop. Such tactics took Lambert by surprise. George's two hands against his one on the stock were victorious. The whip flew to one side. Lambert, flushing angrily, started after it. George barred his path, raising his fists.

"You don't touch that thing again."

Lambert's indecision, his hands hanging at his sides, hurt George nearly as much as the lashing would have done. He had to destroy that att.i.tude of sheer superiority.

"I'm not sure you're a man," he said, thickly, "but you tried to hit me, so you can put your pretty hands up or take it in the face."

He aimed a vicious blow. Lambert side-stepped and countered. George's ear rang. He laughed, his self-respect rushing back with the keen joy of battle. In Lambert's face, stripped of its habitual repression, he recognized an equal excitement. It was a man's fight, with blood drawn at the first moment, staining both of them. Lambert boxed skillfully, and his muscles were hard, but after the first moment George saw victory, and set out to force it. He looked for fear in the other's eyes then, and longed to see it, but those eyes remained as unafraid as Sylvia's until there wasn't left in them much of anything conscious. As a last chance Lambert clinched, and they went down, fighting like a pair of furious terriers. George grinned as he felt those eclectic hands endeavouring in the most brotherly fashion to torture him. He managed to pin them to the ground. He laughed happily.

"Thought you hated to touch me."

"You fight like a tiger, anyway," Lambert gasped.

"Had enough?"

Lambert nodded.

"I know when I'm through."

George didn't release him at once. His soul expanded with a sense of power and authority earned by his own effort. It seemed an omen. It urged him too far.

"Then," he mused, "I guess I'd better let you run home and tell your father what I've done to you."

"That," Lambert said, "proves I was right, and I'm sorry I fought you."

George tried to think. He felt hot and angry. Was the other, after all, the better man?

"I take it back," he muttered. "Ought to have had enough sense to know that a fellow that fights like you's no tattle-tale."

"Thanks, Morton."

George's sense of power grew. He couldn't commence too soon to use it.

"See here, Mr. Planter, I came up here to help with some horses your people didn't know how to handle, and let myself get shifted to this other job; but I'm not your father's slave, and anyway I'm getting out."

He increased the pressure on Lambert's arms.

"Just to remind you what we've been fighting about, and that I'm not your slave, you call me Mr. Morton, or George, just as if I was about as good as you."

Lambert smiled broadly.

"Will you kindly let me go--George?"

George sprang up, grinning.

"How you feel, Mr. Lam----" He caught himself--"Mr. Planter?"

Lambert struggled to his feet.

"Quite unwell, thanks. I'm sorry you made such a d.a.m.ned fool of yourself this afternoon. We might have had some pretty useful times boxing together."

"I'd just as leave tell you," George said, glancing away, "that I never intended to say it. I didn't realize it myself until it was scared out of me."

Lambert put on his coat.

"It won't bear talking about."

"It never hit me," George said, huskily, "that even a cat couldn't look at a queen."

"Perfectly possible," Lambert said as he walked off, feeling his bruises, "only the queen mustn't see the cat."

IV

George went, obliterating as best he could the souvenirs of battle.

Water, unfortunately, was a requisite, and the nearest was to be found at his own home. His mother gasped.

"You did! After what I said!"

At the pump he splashed cold water over his face and arms.

"I thrashed him," he spluttered.

"I guess that settles it for your father and me."

"Young Planter won't tell anybody," George a.s.sured her. "Although I don't see how he's going to get away with it unless he says he was run over by an automobile and kicked by a mule."

"What's come over you?" she demanded. "You've gone out of your head."

He dodged her desire for details. As Lambert had said, the thing wouldn't bear talking about. For the first time in his life he stood alone, and whatever he accomplished from now on would have to be done alone.

He saw his father striding toward them, the anxious light gone from his eyes. George experienced a vast relief.

"Father looks a little more cheerful," he commented, drying his face.

"Get supper, Ma," the man said as he came up.

She hesitated, held by her curiosity, while he turned on George.

"I don't wonder you couldn't open your mouth to me. You're to be out of here to-morrow."