第20章 THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT(2)

He lay with his head touching the rear wall of the large room.

The street was a hundred and fifty feet away, and he did some quick thinking.His first thought was to avoid trouble.He had no wish to get into the papers of this, his childhood town, where many of his relatives and family friends still lived.

So it was that he locked his arms around the man on top of him, held him close, and waited for the help to come that must come in response to the crash of the fall.The help came--that is, six men ran in from the bar and formed about in a semi-circle.

'Take him off, fellows," Watson said."I haven't struck him, and I don't want any fight."But the semi-circle remained silent.Watson held on and waited.

Patsy, after various vain efforts to inflict damage, made an overture.

"Leggo o' me an' I'll get off o' yeh," said he.

Watson let go, but when Patsy scrambled to his feet he stood over his recumbent foe, ready to strike.

"Get up," Patsy commanded.

His voice was stern and implacable, like the voice of God calling to judgment, and Watson knew there was no mercy there.

"Stand back and I'll get up," he countered.

"If yer a gentleman, get up," quoth Patsy, his pale blue eyes aflame with wrath, his fist ready for a crushing blow.

At the same moment he drew his foot back to kick the other in the face.Watson blocked the kick with his crossed arms and sprang to his feet so quickly that he was in a clinch with his antagonist before the latter could strike.Holding him, Watson spoke to the onlookers:

"Take him away from me, fellows.You see I am not striking him.

I don't want to fight.I want to get out of here."The circle did not move nor speak.Its silence was ominous and sent a chill to Watson's heart.

Patsy made an effort to throw him, which culminated in his putting Patsy on his back.Tearing loose from him, Watson sprang to his feet and made for the door.But the circle of men was interposed a wall.He noticed the white, pasty faces, the kind that never see the sun, and knew that the men who barred his way were the nightprowlers and preying beasts of the city jungle.By them he was thrust back upon the pursuing, bull-rushing Patsy.

Again it was a clinch, in which, in momentary safety, Watson appealed to the gang.And again his words fell on deaf ears.

Then it was that he knew of many similar knew fear.For he had known of many similar situations, in low dens like this, when solitary men were man-handled, their ribs and features caved in, themselves beaten and kicked to death.And he knew, further, that if he were to escape he must neither strike his assailant nor any of the men who opposed him.

Yet in him was righteous indignation.Under no circumstances could seven to one be fair.Also, he was angry, and there stirred in him the fighting beast that is in all men.But he remembered his wife and children, his unfinished book, the ten thousand rolling acres of the up-country ranch he loved so well.He even saw in flashing visions the blue of the sky, the golden sun pouring down on his flower-spangled meadows, the lazy cattle knee-deep in the brooks, and the flash of trout in the riffles.Life was good-too good for him to risk it for a moment's sway of the beast.In short, Carter Watson was cool and scared.

His opponent, locked by his masterly clinch, was striving to throw him.Again Watson put him on the floor, broke away, and was thrust back by the pasty-faced circle to duck Patsy's swinging right and effect another clinch.This happened many times.And Watson grew even cooler, while the baffled Patsy, unable to inflict punishment, raged wildly and more wildly.He took to batting with his head in the clinches.The first time, he landed his forehead flush on Watson's nose.After that, the latter, in the clinches, buried his face in Patsy's breast.But the enraged Patsy batted on, striking his own eye and nose and cheek on the top of the other's head.The more he was thus injured, the more and the harder did Patsy bat.

This one-sided contest continued for twelve or fifteen minutes.

Watson never struck a blow, and strove only to escape.

Sometimes, in the free moments, circling about among the tables as he tried to win the door, the pasty-faced men gripped his coat-tails and flung him back at the swinging right of the on-rushing Patsy.Time upon time, and times without end, he clinched and put Patsy on his back, each time first whirling him around and putting him down in the direction of the door and gaining toward that goal by the length of the fall.

In the end, hatless, disheveled, with streaming nose and one eye closed, Watson won to the sidewalk and into the arms of a policeman.

"Arrest that man," Watson panted.

"Hello, Patsy," said the policeman."What's the mix-up?""Hello, Charley," was the answer."This guy comes in--""Arrest that man, officer," Watson repeated.

"G'wan! Beat it!" said Patsy.

"Beat it!" added the policeman."If you don't, I'll pull you in.""Not unless you arrest that man.He has committed a violent and unprovoked assault on me.""Is it so, Patsy?" was the officer's query.

"Nah.Lemme tell you, Charley, an' I got the witnesses to prove it, so help me God.I was settin' in me kitchen eatin' a bowl of soup, when this guy comes in an' gets gay wid me.I never seen him in me born days before.He was drunk--""Look at me, officer," protested the indignant sociologist."Am I drunk?"The officer looked at him with sullen, menacing eyes and nodded to Patsy to continue.

"This guy gets gay wid me.'I'm Tim McGrath,' says he, 'an' Ican do the like to you,' says he.'Put up yer hands.' I smiles, an' wid that, biff biff, he lands me twice an' spills me soup.

Look at me eye.I'm fair murdered."

"What are you going to do, officer?" Watson demanded.

"Go on, beat it," was the answer, "or I'll pull you sure."The civic righteousness of Carter Watson flamed up.

"Mr.Officer, I protest--"

But at that moment the policeman grabbed his arm with a savage jerk that nearly overthrew him.

"Come on, you're pulled."

"Arrest him, too," Watson demanded.

"Nix on that play," was the reply.