The Blue Hotel

The contestants had not stripped off any clothing.  Each was in his ordinary attire.  Their fists were up, and they eyed each other in a calm that had the elements of leonine cruelty in it.

During this pause, the Easterner's mind, like a film, took lasting impressions of the three men--the iron-nerved master of the ceremony; the Swede, pale, motionless, terrible; and Johnnie, serene yet ferocious, brutish yet heroic.  The entire prelude had in it a tragedy greater than the tragedy of action, and this aspect was accentuated by the long mellow cry of the blizzard, as it sped the tumbling and wailing flakes into the black abyss of the south.

"Now!" said Scully.

The two combatants leaped forward and crashed together like bullocks.  There was heard the cushioned sound of blows, and of a curse squeezing out from between the tight teeth of one.

As for the spectators, the Easterner's pent-up breath exploded from him with a pop of relief, absolute relief from the tension of the preliminaries.  The cowboy bounded into the air with a yowl.  Scully was immovable as from supreme amazement and fear at the fury of the fight which he himself had permitted and arranged.

For a time the encounter in the darkness was such a perplexity of flying arms that it presented no more detail than would a swiftly-revolving wheel.  Occasionally a face, as if illumined by a flash of light, would shine out, ghastly and marked with pink spots.  A moment later, the men might have been known as shadows, if it were not for the involuntary utterance of oaths that came from them in whispers.

Suddenly a holocaust of warlike desire caught the cowboy, and he bolted forward with the speed of a broncho.  "Go it, Johnnie; go it!  Kill him! Kill him!"

Scully confronted him.  "Kape back," he said; and by his glance the cowboy could tell that this man was Johnnie's father.

To the Easterner there was a monotony of unchangeable fighting that was an abomination.  This confused mingling was eternal to his sense, which was concentrated in a longing for the end, the priceless end.  Once the fighters lurched near him, and as he scrambled hastily backward, he heard them breathe like men on the rack.

"Kill him, Johnnie! Kill him!  Kill him!  Kill him!"  The cowboy's face was contorted like one of those agony masks in museums.

"Keep still," said Scully icily.

Then there was a sudden loud grunt, incomplete, cut short, and Johnnie's body swung away from the Swede and fell with sickening heaviness to the grass.  The cowboy was barely in time to prevent the mad Swede from flinging himself upon his prone adversary.  "No, you don't," said the cowboy, interposing an arm.  "Wait a second."

Scully was at his son's side.  "Johnnie! Johnnie, me boy?"  His voice had a quality of melancholy tenderness.  "Johnnie?  Can you go on with it?"  He looked anxiously down into the bloody pulpy face of his son.

There was a moment of silence, and then Johnnie answered in his ordinary voice:  "Yes, I--it--yes."

Assisted by his father he struggled to his feet.  "Wait a bit now till you git your wind," said the old man.

A few paces away the cowboy was lecturing the Swede.  "No, you don't!  Wait a second!"

The Easterner was plucking at Scully's sleeve.  "Oh, this is enough," he pleaded.  "This is enough!  Let it go as it stands.  This is enough!"

"Bill," said Scully, "git out of the road."  The cowboy stepped aside.  "Now."  The combatants were actuated by a new caution as they advanced toward collision.  They glared at each other, and then the Swede aimed a lightning blow that carried with it his entire weight.  Johnnie was evidently half-stupid from weakness, but he miraculously dodged, and his fist sent the over-balanced Swede sprawling.

The cowboy, Scully, and the Easterner burst into a cheer that was like a chorus of triumphant soldiery, but before its conclusion the Swede had scuffled agilely to his feet and come in berserk abandon at his foe.  There was another perplexity of flying arms, and Johnnie's body again swung away and fell, even as a bundle might fall from a roof.  The Swede instantly staggered to a little wind-waved tree and leaned upon it, breathing like an engine, while his savage and flame-lit eyes roamed from face to face as the men bent over Johnnie.  There was a splendor of isolation in his situation at this time which the Easterner felt once when, lifting his eyes from the man on the ground, he beheld that mysterious and lonely figure, waiting.

"Are you any good yet, Johnnie?" asked Scully in a broken voice.

The son gasped and opened his eyes languidly.  After a moment he answered:  "No--I ain't--any good--any--more."  Then, from shame and bodily ill, he began to weep, the tears furrowing down through the bloodstains on his face.  "He was too--too--too heavy for me."

Scully straightened and addressed the waiting figure.  "Stranger," he said, evenly, "it's all up with our side."  Then his voice changed into that vibrant huskiness which is commonly the tone of the most simple and deadly announcements.  "Johnnie is whipped."

--"The Blue Hotel" (1899), by Stephen Crane