I'll give it to him. He could punch.
"Stay close to him," the Tinker whispered.
"Keep your hands higher and your elbows in. Work on his body when you get the chance."
When time was called, Caffrey rushed from his corner and began punching with both hands. He hit me several times, almighty hard, but I got my head down against his chest again and hooked both hands hard to the belly. He tried to push me off then, but I stepped in fast and back-heeled him and he went down hard, ending the round.
As we went on it was nip and tuck, both of us punching hard. He was fast, and he was in good shape, and he moved well. The first six rounds were gone in fourteen minutes, but the seventh round lasted five minutes all by itself.
He'd pounded me about the head, but I wasn't really hurt. He'd drawn first blood --there was a trickle of it from my lip that had been cut against my teeth. He was unmarked, and the betting had gone up to three to one on Caffrey.
Opposite us a window had gone up in the second story of a house, and I could see a couple of women there, watching the fight. Another window in that same house was open, too, but nobody watched from it.
Round eight came up and I went out fast, slipped a left lead for my head and smashed him in the ribs. It taken his wind, and it shook him up. It was my first hard punch of the fight, and I think it surprised him. He backed off, studying me, and I stalked him. I made awkwardly as if to throw my right and he stepped in, hitting hard with his right.
My left arm was bent at the elbow, first at shoulder level, elbow near the hip, and I'd moved my left shoulder and hip over almost to the center line, while leaving my fist cocked where it was. As Caffrey threw that right, I let go with my left, letting it whip around, thrown by the tension built up by turning my shoulder forward and the weight behind it.
The blow struck high on his cheekbone and knocked him across the ring into the ropes. Eager hands shoved him back, but I was moving in on him and I struck him again with my left fist, but I was too eager with my right, and missed. He clinched and back-heeled me into the dirt, falling atop me and jerking his knee into my groin.
Throwing him off, I came up fast and mad, and hurt by that knee. He cocked his fist, and then Walton stepped in and stopped the round.
Twice after that he drove me into the ropes and once I was hit from outside the ropes, hit hard just above the kidney. I turned to complain and he knocked me down ... a clean knock-down.
The crowd was mad now. Arguments were starting all about us, and there were several fights going close to the ring, and one back beyond it. Once, wrestling in a clinch, I thought I saw movement at that empty window, and made up my mind to speak to Doc about it.
It was bloody fighting now. Moving in, I smashed him in the mouth with a right that split his lip and started the blood flowing. In a clinch he said hoarsely, "I'm going to kill you, Sackett!
Right here in this ring, I'm going to kill you!"
"I broke your bones once," I replied, "and I'll do it again!"
Catching his left arm under mine, I threw him off balance and hit him twice in the belly before I let go. We moved together, punching with both hands, and outside the ropes the crowd was shouting and brawling. Nothing could be heard above the din.
Deliberately, I still pounded away at his body, but his stomach and ribs were like rock. He cut a slit above my eye and knocked me into the ropes, and there someone struck me a stunning blow over the back of the head with something like a blackjack or sandbag.
Even as I fell, Caffrey rushed at me and struck me twice in the face. I fell forward, and was scarcely conscious as the Tinker and Doc dragged me to my corner. Yet when the bell rang I was on my feet.
Now he started after me, and, still feeling the effects of the blow over the head, I could not get myself together. My punches were poorly timed and lacked force, and Caffrey rushed at me, pounding away with both hands. Getting in close, I seized him bodily, lifted him clear of the ground, and slammed him down with such force that the wind was knocked from him.
"The one in the checked suit," Doc whispered, "he's the one who sapped you."
Glancing across the ring, I saw him there, a broad-faced man with coarse features, who was wearing a black hat.
Caffrey was wary of me now, and we circled a bit, and I backed him slowly toward the man in the checked suit. That man, I noticed, had his right hand out of sight under his coat. Near the ropes I moved in, feinted, ducked a left, and landed a right under the heart, pushing him back into the ropes. Smashing another blow to the belly, I deliberately pushed him against the ropes so the men crowded there must give way, then I struck hard at his head, but off aim just enough for the blow to miss, which it did.
It missed him, but it caught the man in the checked suit on his red, bulbous nose and smashed it, sending a shower of blood over him as he fell.
We slugged in mid-ring then, slugged brutally, taking no time, just punching away. The things that the Tinker had taught me were coming back now.
I stabbed a straight left to the mouth, then crossed my right to his chin. He hit me with a solid right and I staggered, but as he closed in I clinched, caught his right elbow in my left hand, and my right arm went around his body. Then I turned my hip against him and hurled him heavily to the dirt.
He was slow getting up, and suddenly I felt better. There was a cut over my eye, a welt on my cheekbone I could scarcely see over, and my lip had been split, but I felt better.
I had my second wind, and suddenly all the old feeling against the Caffreys was welling up inside me. They had robbed me and enslaved me, they had treated me cruelly when there was no chance to fight back. Now we would see.
When time was called I went out fast. I feinted and hit him with a solid right on the jaw.
His knees buckled, so I moved in fast to catch him before he could fall and bull him into the ropes.
If he went down he would have rest and might recover. Men tried to push him off the ropes so he could fall, but I held him there and hit him with both hands in the face with all the power I had.
When he started to fall away from the ropes I caught him with another punch, and then he did fall. Turning back to my corner, my eyes momentarily caught a flash of light.
Involuntarily I ducked, but there was nothing.
Glancing at the empty window, I found it still empty.
The gamblers were pushing hard on the ropes, and Sheriff Walton shouted at them to hold back, but they were pushing as a mass and there was no one he could single out for a shot, and he was not the man to fire blindly into a crowd.
When we came together again in the center of the ring, I said, "Dun Caffrey, you and your folks robbed me, now I shall have a little of my own back."
He cursed me, and beat me to the punch with a left that jolted me. There was power in the man.
He was a fighter--I'll give him that.
The crowd was shouting wildly, their faces red with fury at me. They had not expected me to last so long, yet here I was, in danger of beating their man.
Sweat trickled into my eye and the salt stung, and, momentarily blinded, I failed to see the right with which he knocked me into the ropes. Now it was he who held me there, and as he battered at me with both fists, several men pounded the back of my head and my kidneys from beyond the ropes. Had they left it to one man he might have done me serious injury, but so eager were they, and most of them drinking, that they interfered with one another.
I got my head down against his chest and again the great strength of me helped, for I bulled him away from the ropes and into the center of the ring.
As we broke apart, each ready for a blow, sunlight flashed again in my eyes--sunlight reflected from a rifle barrel. In the window which until now had seemed empty, a man was aiming a rifle at me.