Part 4 (2/2)
Em rose quickly, losing her air of coquetry. Gordon was facing the men, and was unprepared for the heavy blow she dealt upon the back of his neck.
”Hang it on him, Otty!” she cried excitedly.
Mr. Ottinger shoved the card table from his path. It was now evident that it was, precisely, to ”hang it on” whoever might be elected for that delicate attention which formed Otty's purpose, profession, preoccupation, in life. He was, for a heavy man, active; and, before Gordon Makimmon could put out a protective arm, he returned the latter to the perpendicular with a jarring blow on the chin. Jake whipped out from a place of concealment on his person a plaited leather weapon with a globular end.
It was Jake, Gordon instinctively knew, who threatened him most; he could easily stop the hulking shape before him. He regained his poise, and returned blow for blow with Mr. Ottinger; neither man guarded, both were solely intent upon marking, crippling, the other. A chair fell, sliding across the floor; a washstand collapsed with a splintering crash of china, a miniature flood. Em stood on the outskirts of the conflict, armed with the whisky bottle; Jake crouched watchful with the leather club. Gordon cut his opponent's face with short, vicious jabs; he was, as customary, cold--he saw clearly where every blow fell; he saw Otty's nose grotesquely shapeless and blackened; he felt Otty's teeth cut the skin of his knuckles and break off; he heard his involuntary gasp as he struck him a hammer-like blow over the heart.
Mr. Ottinger, in return, hit him frequently and with effect. Gordon was conscious of a warm, gummy tide spreading over his face, he saw with difficulty through rapidly closing eyes. ”For Cri's sake,” Otty gasped, ”get to him, the town'll be on us.”
Em made an ineffectual lunge with the bottle. Gordon swung the point of his elbow into her side, and she sat on the bed with a ”G-G-G.o.d!” Jake hit him with the club on the shoulder blade; numbness radiated from the struck point; there was a loss of power in the corresponding arm. Jake hit him again, and a stabbing pain entered his side and stayed apparently tangled in splintered bone. He paused for a moment, and all three fell upon him, beating, clubbing, kicking. He fought on, now rapidly losing power. The woman threw herself on his back, forced him to his knees. ”Won't none of you do for him?” she complained hysterically. She pressed his head into her breast, and Mr. Ottinger hit him below and just back of his ear.
Gordon slipped out full length on the floor.
He was waveringly conscious, but he had lost all interest, all sense of personal connection, with the proceedings. He dully watched Ottinger draw back, tenderly fingering his damaged features; he saw Em breathing stormily, empurpled. Jake, with the crimson flames in his long, pallid mask, the white saliva flecking his jaw, hung over him with a gla.s.sy, intent stare.
”Get the stuff,” the practical Ottinger urged; ”it's the stuff we're after. Don't go bug again.”
”Jake don't hear you,” Em told him, ”he's off. I'm glad the fella's going to be fixed, he jolted me something fierce.”
Jake swung the little, flexuous club softly against his palm, and Gordon suddenly realized that the cripple intended to kill him.--That was the l.u.s.t which transfigured the gambler's countenance, which lit the fires in the deathly cheeks, set the long fingers shaking. Gordon considered the idea, and, obscurely, it troubled him, moved him a s.p.a.ce from his apathy.
Instinctively, in response to a sudden movement of the figure above him, he drew his arm up in front of his head; and an intolerable pain shot up through his shoulder and flared, blindingly, in his eyes. It pierced his indifference, set in motion his reason, his memory; he realized the necessity, the danger, of his predicament ... the money!--he must guard it, take it back with him. Above, in a heated, orange mist, the woman's face loomed blank and inhuman; farther back Mr. Ottinger's features were indistinctly visible.
He must rise....
His groping hand caught hold of the rung of the chair, and, with herculean labor, he turned and raised himself a fraction from the floor. Jake directed a hasty blow at his head that missed him altogether. His other hand caught the chair, and he dragged himself dizzily into a kneeling posture. A sudden change swept over the three above him.
”Nail him where he is!” Em cried excitedly; ”he's getting up on you.”
Gordon's hands moved uncertainly upward on the chair; his knees rose from the floor. A shower of blows fell on him; the woman beat him with her pudgy fists; Mr. Ottinger was kicking at him; Jake was weeping, and endeavoring to get room in which to swing his club.
Gordon had one foot on the floor.
”Give me a chance at him,” Jake implored; ”give me a chance. G.o.d, if I had a knife.”
If they took away the chair, Gordon knew, he was lost. He clung to it; pressed his breast against it; crept upward by means of it, slowly, slowly, through a storm of battering hands. It seemed to him that, in rising, he was shouldering aside the entire weight, the forces, of a universe, bent on his destruction, and against which he was determined to prevail. It was as though his will, the vitality which animated him, which was his soul, stood aside from his beaten and suffering body, and, with a cold, a cruel, detachment, commanded it upright.
The woman's bulk got in Jake's way, and he struck her across the eyes with the back of his hand, consigning her to eternal h.e.l.l. Mr. Ottinger, confused by the irregularity of the turmoil, worked inefficiently, swinging at random his hard fists, kicking impartially.
Gordon now had both feet upon the floor; he straightened up. For a breath the three stood motionless, livid; and in that instant his hand fell upon the door k.n.o.b, he staggered back into the hall, carrying with him a vision of his brocaded tie lying upon the floor.
XII
He stumbled hastily down the stairway, and found the narrow porch, the serene, enveloping night; down the street lamps made blots of brightness, but, beyond, the obscurity was profound, unbroken. Wave after wave of nausea swept over him, he clung to a porch support with cold sweat starting through the blood that smeared his countenance, stiffened in his s.h.i.+rt, that was warm upon his side. The sound of footfalls, sharp, repressed voices from above, stirred him into a fresh realization of his precarious position. The gamblers would follow him, rob him with impunity in the shadows of Sprucesap's lawless street, drag him behind the angle of a building, where Jake would have ample scope for the swinging of his leathered lead....
He lurched down to the street, and silently merged into the awaiting night.
At dawn he appeared from a thicket, a mile beyond Sprucesap on the road to Greenstream, and negotiated successfully a ride on a load of fragrant upland hay to a point within a few miles of his destination. His coat, soiled and torn, was b.u.t.toned across a bare throat, for his s.h.i.+rt had been ripped into bandages; his face, apparently, had been harrowed for a red planting; he moved awkwardly, breathed with a gasp from a stabbing pain in the side ... but he moved, breathed. He drank with long delight from a sparkling spring. He had the money, two hundred and eighty dollars, safely in his pocket.
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