Evening Star Newspaper, October 4, 1931, Page 90

®"10" The Very Strong Here Are Flying Fists and the Strange Ways of a Feminine Heart—All Entering . Into the Scheme of Making an Unusual Tale. Illustrated by Paul Berdanier. EBER DENNING'S hired car ceased to sound like a truck laden with stecl rails and came to a joggly stop in front of the Bagle Hotel. This, not merely because the Eagle Hotel was its goal, but because the local driver siopped the groaning machine that he might have a more carefree view of a fist fight which was roziog right indusiriously in the dead center of W:lbridge's dusty square. The driver gazed avidiy at the two giants who were pummeling and gouging and kicking each other amid a cloud of red clay dust. He knew both fighters. To him the fight thus had kcen personal import. The car’s {o pa crs eyed the contest as Albert Einstein ght ew a backward primary school child’'s strugzle with the multi- plication table. Heber Denning, the manager; Con Reardon, his star middlewciglit; Joe Devine and Spike Cronan, the two handlers, would not have given a second gilance to such an ama- teurish exhibition, were it not for certain added features which strewed the bout: The aforesaid ~efforts of kicking and at gouging, as well as other mountaineer war tactics which had a cer- tain lure of novelty to these four ring experts. S they looked, a slight-built man barely of middle height came sprinting lightly across the square, and clove his way with entire ease through the tight circle of idlers around the space in whore middle the two gladiators bat- tled. ' In between the two jumped the newcomer, as though to play the peacemaker. But in al- most the same set of gestures he knocked ome after the other of them neatly off their feet with a single blow to the jaw of each. Blind with war-lust, they scrambled up and at each other; only to drop again to earth, this time more heavily. Heber Denning caught his breath. Here was & shabby mountaineer who hit with a quiet per- fection that few pugilists could equal. Con Reardon grinned with sudden appreciation of the interloper’s prowess. “Who in blue blazes is that feller?” demanded Reardon. “That’s Jeff Marshall,” proudly answered the hired car's driver. “The one they eall “The very strong man, Kwasind,’ whatever that means. Avis Kent (she's our new school teacher) give him that funny name; got it out'n a book of po'try. The boys picked it up and they call it to Jefr.” But Denning and Con Reardon were not listening. On tacit dua’ impulse they were making for the group a. und the prostrate sluggers. They pierced the clump of spectators Just as one of the fallen men was sitting up and as the other opened his eyes and blinked owl- ishly at his assailant. “If I'da knowed it was you, Jefl,” began the sitter, “I'd never of—-" “Well, you know it’s me now, the two of you,” interposed the slight man. “And there's some- thing more for both of you to know: When I get down off the stage a minute ago, Randall tells me you quarreled because both of you wanted to be the one to take Miss Kent to the dance tomorrow night; me not being expected back till day after. Well, you're neither one of you going to take her to that dance. And youre not going to quarrel over her, either. Nobody is; because I'm aiming to keep every man in this county off quarreling terms about her. She's my girl. Don’t make me teach that to you any harder’'n I've just had to.” The harangue was delivered with no hint of bluster. A few of its longer words were pro- nounced with evident carefulness, as though newly acquired. Indeed, the speaker’s diction ‘and English were markedly better than those of the other Walbridge denizens whom Denning hhngd heard curing his few minutes in the vil- e, Without so much as waiting to see how his oration right be taken by his two victims, Jeff Marshall strolled out of the circle and toward the far corner of the square. Denning fell into step with him. » “Excuse me, friend,” began the manager, “but you sure packed some punch.” © “Yes,” assented Marshall, carelessly, “I al- ways did. I was born that way. Some is— are—born with riusic in them and some are born artists and the like, so the school teacher here tells me. &he says I was born like Sam- son. She says there’s every now and then a Samson born. One of them was in a poem by Mister Longfellow. A poem called ‘Hia- watha.’ I and she read part of it aloud, when she was giving me schooling, evenings. ‘The very strong man, Kwasind,’ his name was. He was an Indian. And he was stronger .than the other redskins, just as I'm stronger than the folks hereabouts. Stranger up here, am’t— aren’t—you?” he finished. "I\/ES. My name is Denning. I manage a string of fighters. I was on my way to our new training quarters near Louisville with Con Reardon and a couple of roustabouts, when our train hit a washout, below Sparta. I char- tered a car and we came on, over the moun- tains. We're stopping at the Eagle Hotel for lunch I may be wrong about you; but I don’t often make that kind of blunder, I think I can shape you into a fighter. Want to sign up with gre?” 4 . “Huh?” “If I'm mistaken and you're no good, I'll pay ycu for your time and send you back here. If I'm right, there's more fame and more cash for you than you'd make in these mountains in ten thousand years. Want to talk turkey with me?" Marshall turned to eye him. “No,” he made answer, “I don't want to talk turkey or anything else with yowy A man down in Alton put that same kind of proposi- tion up to me only a month or two ago; when he saw me push over a truck driver that made chirpy noises at Miss Kent, when I took her to the movies there. Miss Kent says gentle- men don’t fight for money. I'm a gentleman. That's all.” “Miss Kent?” “She took the school, last Fall. Miss Avis Kent. I'm going to marry her. I haven't told her yet. I was waiting to see if I could get my price for the strip of mountain foot land on my farm that the railroad wants. Well, I closed the deal, this trip I'm just back from. With what the farm gives me this money’ll be enough for me to marry on., Think I'm going to throw all that away, to be a fighter and to stop being a gentleman? Why, she’d never look at a man that wasn't a gentleman! She said so.” “But come with me, and when you make your pile you can come back here again and be a ‘gentleman’,” urged Denning, trying to keep his face straight. “You've got a natural hitting power that not one slugger in a thou- sand can learn in a lifetime.” “That’ll be all,” quietly interrupted Marshall. “I'm not interested in listening to any more.” With no word of good-by, he got into action again, this time with a swift stride wholly dif- ferent from his earlier mountaineer slouch, Denning stared after him and saw he was trying to overtake a slim young woman who had just come out of the school house at the far end of the square. Then, with a grunt, the manager made his way gloomily back to the Eagle Hotel. / Before the girl had traversed half the length of the square’s far border, Jeff Marshall had ranged alongside her. “Hello, Avis!” he hailed her, his face shining. “I'm back. Lord, but it's grand to see you again! The deal's went — gone — through, and I—" “I heard you were back,” answered the girl shortly, not checking her rapid pace, nor so much as looking at the eager face that bent so close to her own. “Jimmy Cottrell just toid me as I was leaving school. I had sent him out for some new pen points. He told me you were back. And he told me about the dis- graceful exhibition out there. He——" “Disgraceful?” stuttered Jeff. “Dis——? Oh, you mean me having to lay out those two hairy-ears? That wasn't my fault. They had to be licked. They were fighting about——" “You needn't go on,” said Avis. “Jimmy told me. They were fighting about me and making no secret of it. Then you thrashed them, and you told every one in hearing that I was—that I was——" “That you're my girl, and everybody else has got to leave you be?” finished Marshall. “I sure did. And you are. And they have. Be- sides——" “Oh!” blazed Avis Kent, white with fury. “Oh! And you are the—the creature I've tried so hard to humanize! And all for this! I never want see you again as long as I live, You've humfliated me, and you've shamed me publicly as I never dreamed any one——" 1" A VIS!” gasped the man, dumfounded. “Avis! You've gone crazy! Just because I said you're my girl? But you are my girl. I s’posed you knowed—knew that. Every one else does. Hereabouts, if a lady lets a man take her to shows and buggy-riding and for walks and all that, it doesn’t mean but one thing. She’s his girl. They're aiming to get married to each other. I—” “Here in this barbarous back woods hole!” she flashed. “So that's what is supposed to be meant if a girl takes pity on a native’s loneli- ness and on his yearnings for an education! If she lets him walk or drive with her, or if she goes to motion pictures with him, she ie his ‘girl't She has bound herself to marry him! She has no right to complain if he shouts her name at the top of his lungs in the square and tells every one she belongs to him! Oh, I never thought I could feel so degraded, so angry! This comes of helping an ignorant mountaineer! I've had my lesson. I've—" “I've had mine, too, I reckon,” drawled the man, his face bone-gray. “I—I understand, now. You're a city girl, aiid I'm a—an ‘igno- rant mountaineer,’ like you said. I'm fit to pass the time with, up here, but I'm not fit to be married to you. If I was rich and had a big name, I'll bet it'd be different. That'd be another tune to sing, I reckon. And— maybe we'll sing that tune one of these days. I-rn—-" His voice cracked ludicrously. Wheeling about, he broke into a run, heading across the square. For an instant, Avis Kent watched him, in ‘white wrath. Thenhdeyel_mkted,nm- THE SUNDAY STAR, WAS Man, Kwasind In between the two jumped the newcomer. In almost the samé countably. She took a hesitant step in the direction in which nhe had gone. But she faltered, pausing irresolute, striving vainly to remember her just cause for ire and to forget the grimly stricken look in Marshall's eyes. Heber Denning was walking into the dining room of the Eagle Hotel. As he stepped for- ward, a hand gripped his shoulder and spun the obese manager around. Jeff Marshall was facing him, still bone-gray and starkly grim of visage. o “Listen, you!” grated Jeff. “Were you fool- ing, back there, when you said there was a chance I could win a pot of real money and a wad of fame, if I'd sign up with you? If you were, you're going out of this hotel feet foremost. Speak up!” “I was in earnest, all right,” replied Den- ning, uneasy at the other’s tone, yet thrilled at the chance of having made so miraculous a find. “Sit down Lere with me. We’ll talk it over. - I'll give you a try-out. If I'm wrong about you, I'll send you back home with enough money to pay you for your time. If I'm right, you'll go far. Sit down.” To Jeff Marshall the tawdry cottage rented as training quarters by Denning was a miracle of gorgeous beauty and space. Even the barn, fitted up as a gvmnasium, seemed to him cathedral-like in its vast spaces and cleanli- ness. The mountain-bred youth was awed by everything. A sense of this awe clung to him when he stripped, two mornings later, for his first try-out. Hidden no longer by his shapeless clothes, his spare body showed up in a way to win a nod of surprised approval from Denning. Here were no bulging Hercules muscles and lumpy contours. But there were the long and grace- ful sinews of the tiger. Here, too, was the tangle of smooth thews below the shoulder blades whence comes vast hitting power. Twice, perhaps, in a century men are born with this superhuman strength and with no spectacular outer sign of its presence. “Ever boxed?” inquired the manager. “The county agent used to try to teach me how to, when I was a youngster,” said Jefl, “And I stuck to it longer'n most of the other lads. But those great big clumsy pillows took most of the fun out of it. Bare hands is what folks are given to do their hitting with. Not softy cushions.” E eyed with open disfavor the boxing gloves which Devine and Cronan, the two handlers, were taking out of a bag. “Fists are best, all right,” said Denning. “But the law says you can’t fight unless you dress them up. No nude knuckles in the ring. You can use these things as well as you could bare hands as soon as you get the Slip on this pair.” aggrieved soul of Jeff Marshall—“the man, Kwasind”—burned agoniz- the memory of the love he had lost, and his resolve, common to every discarded suitor since the birth of time, to win wealth and renown which should make his sweetheart rue her cruelty. He set his teeth and worked his unaccustomed hands into the impeding gloves. “Cronan here is going to box a couple of rounds with you,” explained Denning, as one of the handlers drew on the mates to Mar- shall’s gloves. “I can see what promise you've got by the way you can stand up to him. Just forget all you know about kicking and kneeing and gouging. Those things will get you thrown out of any ring. Hit above the belt. Hit and keep on hitting. And protect your- self against Cronan the best you can. Nobody' going to razz you. . . . Time!” A little to the manager’'s surprise and muc! to his delight, Marshall showed no comic awk wardness in his advance toward the waitin, Cronan. His rudimentary boxing lessons h not been wasted. Jeff came forward easil, and dropped into a regulation posture o defense. Cronan danced toward him, merrily avid make a monkey of the backwoodsman. Cronaf himself had reached a tolerably formidabl position in the ranks of the middleweights b fore Denning had annexed his services at mor Old Canal in G. Continued from Seventh Page ter, being taken by surprise, defended them selves for some time as best they could, bu having no weapons to resist the other party with and the blows falling on them thici and heavy, they were at length forced to re treat in the direction of the lower bridge. HE armed party struck them whenever they had a chance, and when they arrived afj the lower bridge they ceased pursuing and returned, the Georgetown boys continuing on to their homes. Some of the Georgetown party, it appears, defended themselves bravely, with such objects as they could lay their hand on. Among tnem was our old friend Leonar: Cookendorfer, a Georgetown blacksmith who lived on High street nearly opposite to where Forrest Hall now stands. He had a powerful frame and a grip of the hand like a vice. I have several times felt his grip in my young days. He was a good-natured, friendly, jovia man. He, it appears, at the commencement] of the melee seized a fence rail and defende himself manfully, for, as fast as they would come up to him to give him a blow with the cudgels he, with his fence rail, would lay them prostraté on the ground and in this manne he fought his way through to Georgetown. “This affair caused considerable excitemen in Georgetown, and that night some of the men gathered up their muskets and old fowling) pieces and put them in order, determined to go over the next morning an seek satisfaction for the insult and injury they had received! from the laborers, and it was with great diffi- culty that the mayor, Mr. Corcoran, could prevent them from carrying out their designs. “The place where the laborers cut their bludgeons, as near as I have been able to ascertain, must have been near the branch between K and L and Twenty-second and Twenty-third streets, a little northwest of the Six Buildings. The spot where the cock-pit was located a little south of the Circle, and I think it was also within the limits of the old race ground.” Naturally, this was during the early days of ‘Washington and when Georgetown had a popu- lation of less than 3,000, for at a later period the feeling became more amicable as the people west of the creek began to profit by the large amount of business brought to the District of Columbia through the locating here