"Don't talk that way about a girl," said he to the stranger, and it made a sensation among the crowd.
I never knew a man before with courage enough to kick in public on such subjects. As it was, the man said something so much worse that right there the front busted out of the tiger-cage and for a few brief moments we were given over to chaos.
I had seen Whitewater walloped and I knew how full of parlor tricks the kid was, but this time he went insane. He knocked that man off the counter at the first pass and climbed him with his hobnails as he lay on the floor. A fight is a fight, and a good thing for spectators and participants, for it does more to keep down scurvy than anything I know of, but the thud of those heavy boots into that helpless flesh sickened me, and we rushed Prosser out of there while he struggled like a maniac. I never saw such a complete reversal of form. Somewhere, away back yonder, that boy's forefathers were pirates or cannibals or butchers.
When the fog had cleared out of his brain the reaction was just as powerful. I took him out alone while the others worked over the Alder Creek party, and all at once my man fell apart like wet sawdust.
"What made me do it--what made me do it?" he cried. "I'm crazy. Why, I tried to kill him! And yet what he said is true--that's the worst of it--it's true. Think of it, and I fought for her. What am I coming to?"
After the clean-up we came to camp, waiting for the river to break and the first boat to follow. It was then that the suspense began to tell on our partner. He read and reread his letters, but there was little hope in them, and now, with no work to do, he grew nervous. Added to everything else, our food ran short, and we lived on scraps of whatever was left over from our winter grub-stake. Just out of cussedness the break-up was ten days late, the ten longest days I ever put in, but eventually it came, and a week later also came the mail. We needed food and clothes, we needed whisky, we needed news of the great, distant world--but all we thought of was our mail.
The boy had decided to go home. We were sorry to see him leave, too, for he had the makings of a real man in him even if he shaved three times a week, but no sooner was the steamer tied than he came plunging into my tent like a moose, laughing and dancing in his first gladness. The mother was well again.