The Luck of the Mounted Part 8

"Showdown!" he muttered under his breath, "I knew it had to come!" He was conscious of a feeling of vast relief. Aloud he responded, blithely and rudely, "Oh! to h.e.l.l with _you_!"

Yorke checked his horse with a suddenness that brought the animal back onto its haunches. Sitting square and motionless in the saddle for a moment he stared at George with an expression almost of shocked amazement; then his face became convulsed with ruthless pa.s.sion.

The junior constable had pulled up also, and now wheeling "half-left" and lolling lazily in his saddle with shortened leg stared back at his enemy with an expression there was no mistaking. His debonair young face had altered in an incredible fashion. Although his lips were pursed up with their whistling nonchalance his eyes had contracted beneath scowling brows into mere pin-points of steel and ice. He looked about as docile as a young lobo wolf--cornered.

"Ah!" murmured Yorke, noting the transformation; and he seemed to consider. He had seen that look on men's faces before. Insensibly, pa.s.sion had vanished from his face; the bully had disappeared; and in his place there sat in saddle a cool, contemptuous gentleman.

"Are you talking back to me?" he said. He did not look astounded now--seemed rather to a.s.sume it.

Redmond's scowling brows lifted a fraction. "Talking back?" he echoed, "sure! Who the devil do you think you're trying to come 'the Tin Man'

over?"

Reluctantly Yorke discounted his first impressions. Here was no self-conscious bravado. Warily he surveyed George for a moment--the cool appraising glance of the ring champion in his corner scanning his challenger--then, swinging out of the saddle, he dropped his lines and began to unbuckle his spurs.

There was no mistaking his actions. Redmond followed suit. A few seconds he looked dubiously at his horse, then back at Yorke.

"Oh, you needn't be scared of Fox beating it," remarked that gentleman a trifle wearily, "he'll stand as good as old Parson if you chuck his lines down."

Shading his eyes from the sun-glare he took a rapid survey of their surroundings, then led the way to a wind-swept patch of ground, more or less bare of snow. Arriving thither, as if by mutual consent they flung off caps, side-arms, fur-coats and stable-jackets. Yorke, a graceful, compactly-built figure of a man, sized up his slightly heavier opponent with an approving eye.

"You strip good" he said carelessly. "Well! what's it to be? . . .

'muck' or 'm.u.f.fin'?"

"'m.u.f.fin' of course!" snapped Redmond angrily, "what d'ye take me for?--a 'rough-house meal ticket'?"

"All right!" said Yorke soothingly, "don't lose your temper!"

It may have been a shrewdly-calculated attempt to attain that end; and yet again it may have been only sheer mechanical habit that prompted him to stretch forth his hands in the customary salute of the ring.

With an inarticulate exclamation of rage the younger man struck the proffered hands aside and led with a straight left for the other's head.

Yorke blocked it cleverly and fell into a clinch.

"Ah!" murmured Yorke in his antagonist's ear with a sinister smile, "rotten manners! for just that, my buck, I'll make you scoff 'm.u.f.fin'

'till you're quite poorly!"

Working his arms cautiously, he sprang clear of the clinch, then, rushing his man and feinting for the ribs, he rocked Redmond's head back with two terrific left and right hooks to the jaw.

The jarring sting of the punches, although dazing him slightly, brought Redmond to his senses, as he realized how vulnerable his momentary loss of temper had rendered him. He now braced himself with dogged determination and, covering up warily, circled his adversary with clever foot-work. Yorke, tearing in again was met with one of the crudest jabs he had ever known--flush in the mouth. Gamely he retaliated with a stinging uppercut and a right swing which, coming home on Redmond's cheek-bone, whirled him off his balance and sent him sprawling.

Dazed, but not daunted, he scrambled to his feet. Yorke, blowing upon his knuckles with all the air of an old-time "Regency blood," waited with heaving chest and scornful, narrowed eyes.

"Want to elevate the sponge?" he queried sneeringly.

"No!" panted George grimly, "it was you started the whole rotten dirty business, and, by gum! I'll finish it!"

Dancing in and out he drew an ineffective left from his opponent and countered with a pile-driving right to the heart. Yorke gave vent to a groaning exclamation and turned pale. He spat gaspingly out of his mashed lips and propped Redmond off awhile; then, suddenly springing in again he attempted to mix it. George was nothing loath, and the two men, standing toe-to-toe, slugged each other with a perfect whirlwind of damaging punches to face and body.

Even in the giddy whirl of combat, in either man's heart now was a wonder almost akin to respect for each other's ring knowledge and gameness. It was not George's first bout by many, but the physical endurance of this hard, clean-hitting Corinthian of a man was an astounding revelation to him; the science of the graceful, narrow-waisted figure was still as quick and as punishing as a steel trap.

Yorke, for his part, reflected with bitter irony how utterly erroneous had been his primary calculations--how Nemesis was hard upon his heels at last in the guise of this relentless youngster, who fought like a college-bred "Charley Mitch.e.l.l."

Ding! dong!--hook, jab, uppercut, block, and swing; in and out, back and forth, side-stepping and head-work--one long exhausting round. Flesh and blood could not stand the pace--though it was Redmond now who forced it.

Neither of the men was in training and the long strain began to tell upon them both cruelly--especially upon the veteran Yorke. Still, with frosted hair and streaming faces, the sweat-soaked, bruised and bleeding combatants staggered against each other and strove to make play with their weary arms, until utter exhaustion rang the time gong.

Gasping and swaying to and fro, his puffed lips wreathed into a ghastly semblance of his old scornful smile, Yorke dropped his guard and stuck out his chin. He mouthed and pointed to it tauntingly. In spite of himself, a sorry grin flickered over George's battered, weary young face.

He mouthed back--speech was beyond either; sagging at the knees he reeled forward and his right arm went poking out in a wobbling, uncertain punch.

It glanced harmlessly over Yorke's shoulder, but the violent impact of his body sent the other heavily to the ground. An ineffectual struggle to maintain his equilibrium and he, too, fell--face downwards, with his head pillowed on Yorke's heaving chest.

CHAPTER V

We're poor little lambs who've lost our way, Baa! Baa! Baa!

We're little black sheep who've gone astray, Baa--aa--aa!

Gentlemen-rankers out on the spree, d.a.m.ned from here to Eternity, G.o.d ha' mercy on such as we, Baa! Yah! Bah!

KIPLING

A great peace lay upon the frozen landscape--the deep, wintry peace of the vast, snow-bound Nor'West. A light breeze murmured over the crisping snow, and moaned amongst the pines in the timber-lined spurs of the foothills. High overhead in the sunny, dazzling blue vault of heaven a huge solitary hawk slowly circled with wide-spread, motionless wings, uttering intermittently its querulous, eerie whistle.

Awhile the two exhausted men lay gasping for breath--absolutely and utterly spent. Suddenly Yorke shivered violently and sighed. Redmond raised himself off the prostrate form of his late opponent and, staggering over to the pile of their discarded habiliments, slowly and painfully he donned his fur coat and cap; then, picking up Yorke's, he stumbled over to the latter. The senior constable was now sitting up, with arms drooping loosely over his knees. George wrapped the coat around the bowed shoulders and put on the cap.

"You're cold, old man!" he said simply. "We'd best get our things on now, and beat it."

Wearily Yorke raised his head, and, at something he beheld in that disfigured, but unalterably-handsome face, Redmond's heart smote him.

Often in the past he had fondly imagined himself nursing implacable, absolutely undying hatreds; brooding darkly over injuries received in fancy or reality, planning dire and utterly ruthless revenge, etc. But, deep, deep down in his boyish soul he knew it to be only a dismal failure--that he could not keep it up. His was an impulsive, generous young heart--equally quick to forgive an injury as to resent one. Now in his pity and misery he could have cried--to see his erstwhile enemy so hopelessly broken in body and spirit.

Therefore it did not occur to him that it was sheer sentimental absurdity on his part now to drop on one knee and put his arms around that shivering, pride-broken form.

"Yorkey!" he mumbled huskily, "old man! . . . Yor--"

He choked a bit, and was silent.

Waveringly, a skinned-knuckled, but sinewy, shapely hand crept out and gently ruffled Redmond's curly auburn hair. Vaguely he heard a voice speaking to him. Could that tired, kind, whimsical voice belong to Yorke? It said: "Reddy, my old son! . . . we're still in the ring, anyway. . . . Seems--do what we would or could--we couldn't poke each other out. . . ."

Came a long silence; then: "If ever a man was sorry for the rotten way he's acted, it's surely me right now. . . . Got d----d good cause to be p'raps. . . . I handed it to you about the sponge . . . egad! I well-nigh came chucking it up myself--later. My colonial oath! but you're the cleverest, gamest, hardest-hitting young proposition I've ever ruffled it out with! . . . Where'd you pick it up? Who's handled you?"

George slowly rose to his feet. "Man named Scholes--down East" he answered. He eyed Yorke's face ruefully and, incidentally felt his own, "I used to do a bit with the gloves when I was at McGill. Talking about sponges!--I only wish we had one now to chuck up--in tangible form."

He abstracted the other's handkerchief and, rolling it with his own into a pad dabbed it in the snow. Yorke winced. "Hold still, old thing!"

said Redmond, "we'll have to clean off a bit ere we hit the giddy trail again."

For some minutes he gently manipulated the pad. "There! you don't look too bad now. Have a go at me!"

Figuratively, they licked each other's wounds awhile. Yorke had grown very silent. Chin in hands and rocking very slightly to and fro, all huddled up in his fur coat, he gazed unseeingly into the beyond. His face was clouded with such hopeless, bitter, brooding misery that it worried Redmond. He guessed it to be something far deeper than the memory of their recent conflict. He strove to arouse the other.