“Aw, go to——­”

The word was checked at his lips by Crittenden’s fist.  In a rage, Reynolds threw his hand behind him, as though he would pull his revolver, but his wrist was caught by sinewy fingers from behind.  It was Blackford, smiling into his purple face.

“Hold on!” he said, “save that for a Spaniard.”

At once, as a matter of course, the men led the way behind the tents, and made a ring—­Blackford, without a word, acting as Crittenden’s second.  Reynolds was the champion bruiser of the regiment and a boxer of no mean skill, and Blackford looked anxious.

“Worry him, and he’ll lose his head.  Don’t try to do him up too quickly.”

Reynolds was coarse, disdainful, and triumphant, but he did not look quite so confident when Crittenden stripped and showed a white body, closely jointed at shoulder and elbow and at knee and thigh, and closely knit with steel-like tendons.  The long muscles of his back slipped like eels under his white skin.  Blackford looked relieved.

“Do you know the game?”

“A little.”

“Worry him and wait till he loses his head—­remember, now.”

“All right,” said Crittenden, cheerfully, and turned and faced Reynolds, smiling.

“Gawd,” said Abe Long.  “He’s one o’ the fellows that laugh when they’re fightin’.  They’re worse than the cryin’ sort—­a sight worse.”

The prophecy in the soldier’s tone soon came true.  The smile never left Crittenden’s face, even when it was so bruised up that smiling was difficult; but the onlookers knew that the spirit of the smile was still there.  Blackford himself was smiling now.  Crittenden struck but for one place at first—­Reynolds’s nose, which was naturally large and red, because he could reach it every time he led out.  The nose swelled and still reddened, and Reynolds’s small black eyes narrowed and flamed with a wicked light.  He fought with his skill at first, but those maddening taps on his nose made him lose his head altogether in the sixth round, and he senselessly rushed at Crittenden with lowered head, like a sheep.  Crittenden took him sidewise on his jaw as he came, and stepped aside.  Reynolds pitched to the ground heavily, and Crittenden bent over him.

“You let that boy alone,” he said, in a low voice, and then aloud and calmly: 

“I don’t like this, but it’s in deference to your customs.  I don’t call names, and I allow nobody to call me names; and if I have another fight,” Reynolds was listening now, “it won’t be with my fists.”

“Well, Mister Man from Kentucky,” said Abe, “I’d a damn sight ruther you’d use a club on me than them fists; but there’s others of us who don’t call names, and ain’t called names; and some of us ain’t easy skeered, neither.”

“I wasn’t threatening,” said Crittenden, quickly, “but I have heard a good deal of that sort of thing flying around, and I don’t want to get into this sort of a thing again.”  He looked steadily at the soldier, but the eye of Abraham Long quailed not at all.  Instead, a smile broke over his face.