The Shirt On His Back - By Barbara Hambly Page 0,37

hadn't had a formal match since he'd left Paris and had almost forgotten how much he'd enjoyed the sport.

They circled, watching each other for an opening - the trapper was huge, and January guessed he'd be fast. He knew already that he was going to lose, simply because his opponent would outlast him. Aside from being ten years younger, Wildman was someone who really could drag himself for eight days through the wilderness with two broken legs and Indians on his trail, and when all was said and done, for all his size, January was a forty-three-year-old piano-player.

And yet - as he had never been able to explain, either to Rose or to the wife of his Paris days, the beautiful Ayasha - there was great pleasure in fighting a man who fought so well.

He knocked Manitou down twice, and was himself downed, his opponent standing back, like a polite bear, to let Shaw and Hannibal get him on his feet and back to the scratch. They waded in again, hard straight punishing blows and the salt taste of blood on his mouth. He felt his stamina flagging, and sparred for wind and distance, but Manitou crowded him, forced him back toward the ring of spectators, who fell away before them. They grappled, clinched, broke apart — if I can get him down again . . .

They circled, and January squinted against the westering sun—

And saw clearly the bright bar of light that speared into Manitou's eyes.

Squaw wearing a mirror ... He reacted even as he thought this, saw his opponent flinch. His fist connected with jawbone, a blow that came all the way through his back heel from the earth—

Manitou's face changed. He'd been fighting a well-trained beast. Now he suddenly faced the wild one.

The trapper bellowed something - January didn't hear what - and threw himself in, disregarding January's blows and attempts to block, caught him by the throat and hurled him aside as if he'd been a child, then kept on going into the audience. Someone screamed, 'Get him off me! Get him—!' and January struck the ground, tucking his head and curling his body to avoid being trampled. Spectators surged over him, to stop the enraged man. January was kicked, stepped on - at least four men tripped over him and a horse's hoof nicked his shoulder - and when he sat up he couldn't see anything but a surging struggle enveloped in dust, nor hear beyond a thunderous howl of rage.

Shaw and Hannibal thrashed free of the crowd, dashed to his side. 'What the hell happened?' January gasped. 'It looked like sunlight caught some squaw's mirror and threw it in his eyes—'

'That's what happened, all right,' returned Shaw grimly, and helped him to sit. 'Only it was Jed Blankenship holdin' the mirror.'

Of course it would be. So much for the possibility of getting Manitou to talk to him - or even, now, of going out to that isolated campsite with a friendly bottle some evening. Wearily, January said, 'God damn Jed Blankenship.' A dozen yards away, men were hanging on to Wildman as if to a roped bull, and Blankenship, wisely, was nowhere to be seen. 'That goddamned seventy-five dollars - and now Manitou's going to think I was in on it.'

'I'd say there's that possibility.' Shaw got him to his feet. January tried to turn his head, winced at the pang in his muscles. 'Such bein' the case, it may be best you make yourself scarce 'til he cools down . . . Which, Tom tells me, can take years.'

'God damn Jed Blankenship.'

Manitou's voice rose above the din, a bull roar of insane rage, as they walked away up the path for the camp.

Shaw stationed himself outside Morning Star's lodge and spent the remainder of the afternoon explaining over and over to what sounded to January like two-thirds of the camp: 'No, we didn't have nuthin' to do with it . . . Hell, no, we didn't bet on him! Friend or no friend, we ain't crazy! Ask anybody in the camp . . .' Morning Star anointed January's bruises with a poultice of sagebrush and mullein and brought him cold water from the river to soak his knuckles. A little later, Gil Wallach brought the news that such had been the confusion over who'd won and who'd lost that Mick Seaholly had disbarred Jed Blankenship from the AFC liquor tent and all its various amenities. 'And God help slow mares,' the trader added