Hal turned over his weapon to the cowboy. He said, chuckling, 'You can get my last words later.'
Beside his huge opponent Hal seemed slight. There was not an ounce of unnecessary weight on him anywhere. Feet, hips, and hands were in perfect co-ordination, but the massive shoulders and body of Frawley looked overpowering. They packed tremendous force.
'Bet you a buck Stevens doesn't last five minutes, Bill,' Casey said to one of the other cowboys.
Bill shook his head. 'No dice. Stevens is a good man, but he hasn't the weight to beat Jim.'
Frawley came in flatfooted and heavy, swinging hard, with a piledriving force that might have felled a steer. Hal's head moved a few inches. As the big fist scraped over his shoulder his left pumped into the belly of the foreman. That first blow told Hal something he wanted to know. The bully had been a heavy drinker for years, and the midriff that had once been a tight band of steel was now paunchy and soft. The big man's grunt was evidence of its vulnerability.
Hal danced away, his footwork worth seeing as he circled his foe. The motions of arms, shoulders, and long slim body were as rhythmic as the pistons of well-oiled machinery. He had been the middleweight champion of his college, and since then had learned how to adapt his technique to a rough-and-tumble fight. One first principle he had discovered — to hurt his opponent as hard and as often as he could early in a fray without allowing his own power to be sapped. Now he slammed first one fist and then the other into the soft tire of fat circling his enemy's waist.
Frawley began to blow like a porpoise. He plunged at Stevens, disregarding defense, eager to knock out the smaller man quickly. Hal smothered one fist by clever arm work, ducked the other, and drove a right once more into the belly. The foreman glared, breast heaving. Savagely he charged once more. It was the only way of fighting he knew — to slog and hammer his foe to a pulp, if necessary crushing his ribs in by sheer strength. Some of his blows got home. Hal's face was badly cut. One of his eyes was swelling, and there was a bad bruise on his cheek. As yet there was not a mark on Frawley's face. But he was breathing hard. Sharp clean-cut blows had rammed into his kidneys and stomach. Already the fellow was in distress.
Hal began to pay attention to the face. He stepped warily around the man, feinted for the body, and landed hard on the mouth. Before he broke ground, he pounded right and left at the kidneys and slashed another right at the nose that drew blood freely. Frawley gasped. He was being punished cruelly. Surges of nausea swept over him. It came to him that he had to carry the battle or be beaten. He shuffled forward, trying to close with his light-stepping, elusive antagonist. Hal stopped him with two straight smashes to the chin that rocked his head back.
The foreman's eyes were glassy. His arms were so heavy he found difficulty in lifting them. The flailing fists of the cattleman landed almost at will, slashing both at the heaving belly and the battered face. Frawley was bewildered, beaten, almost helpless.
Casey said,' We'd better stop this.' He had no love for the wagon boss, but after all they belonged to the same outfit.
Frank Lovell stood in the doorway, his sister behind him. 'Keep out of this, boys,' he ordered. 'Frawley asked for it. He doesn't work for the Seven Up any more.'
'Gimme my gun,' Frawley demanded of Casey, and staggered toward him.
'Look out!' Dale cried sharply.
The warning was not needed. Frawley did not reach the cowboy. Hal's fist ripped up at his jaw, all the weight of his body back of the blow. The foreman swayed for a moment, feet spraddled, and went down like a log. His big body rolled over, and he lay still, not senseless but unable to rise.
The cowboy Bill goggled at Stevens. 'By golly, I didn't think there was a man in Arizona could do that.'
Hal said negligently, 'He fights like an old woman.'
Wonder in her eyes, Dale looked at the bleeding face of the victor. To Casey she gave an abrupt order. 'Empty all the cartridges from that revolver before you give it back to Frawley.'
'Did Frank mean he has quit this outfit?' Casey asked.
'I fired him ten minutes ago,' Dale answered. 'He has been helping the rustlers to steal our stock. See that he gets off the ranch as soon as he is able to ride.'
Casey watched the whipped man getting laboriously to his feet. The sight of the man's shamed, lowering face was convincing. He did not doubt that the accusation was true. Frawley's character was not of a kind to inspire confidence in his integrity anyhow.
'So he has sold his saddle,'1 Casey said contemptuously. 'Well, we've got Mr. Stevens to thank for giving him what was coming to the skunk. I'll say this, no scalawag ever got a more thorough licking.'
1When a cowboy reached the lowest point of degradation, he sold his saddle, but not until then. The expression came to be a figure of speech.
'I've had all I want of this spread,' Frawley said thickly. 'I was aiming to quit anyhow. I'll be damned if I'll work for a' — he stopped, changing the word he had been about to use — 'for a woman who is never satisfied.'
'Run up his horse for him, Bill,' suggested Frank.
'I can get my own horse. I don't want any favors from this two-bit outfit.' Frawley turned to Dale. 'I'll remember this, Miss. There will come a day when you'll wish you had sung a different song.' His gaze settled on Hal. 'As for you, I'll say just this. You're already a dead man and don't know it.'
'For a dead man he's mighty handy with his dibs,' Casey chuckled. 'Get a move on you, Frawley. If the boys hear you've been selling us out, they'll likely tar and feather you. I'd advise you to light a shuck pronto.'
The discharged foreman headed dejectedly for his cabin, rage and humiliation surging up in him.
CHAPTER 8
A Conference at the Seven Up and Down
DALE SAID, 'Come into the house and let me give first aid to your face.'
Hal grinned. 'I could do with a washup and some sticking plaster,' he admitted.
He followed Frank to a bathroom and washed his face in cold water several times. Blood still oozed out from the cuts.
A knock sounded on the door. 'Doctor Lovell ready for the patient,' Dale announced.
Hal dried his face and opened the door. 'Do I get medical service under the terms of our temporary defensive alliance?' he asked.
'When you are wounded in the service,' she told him. 'Sit down in this chair.'
He sat down, looking at her with a deceptive meekness behind which she discerned an impudent glee. 'My, but we are getting along fast,' he chuckled. 'Yesterday you were looking for a nice tree on which your boys could hang me. Now you are patching me up with your own lily-white hands.'
'I fixed our dog's wounds last week after he had gashed himself on barbed wire,' she mentioned tartly, and tilted his head up so that she could get at a cut better.
'But not an M K dog,' he murmured.
'That eye is going to close on you, I'm afraid. You had better lie down in Frank's room and put a cold pack on it.'
'Yes, ma'am,' he said obediently. 'By the way, Frawley is cut up some too. Does he get any kind attention?'
She ignored that. 'I wish you hadn't fought him. He'll never forgive you for shaming him.'
'He can't hate me much more than he did before our mixup. All he can do is shoot me, and I fancy that had already been arranged.'
'Why do you talk that way, as if it didn't matter?' Dale reproved.
'It matters a lot to me,' Hal replied. 'But why worry about it, since I don't expect the plans to succeed?'