OUR SERIAL STORY

Taranaki Daily News, 17 November 1926, Page 7

OUR SERIAL STORY

“ Love in the Saddle ”

(By

y J. C. LOCKE.)

(All Rights Reserved.)

(Chapter IX Continued.) “Lesson me! Yoit lesson me! Hell! —you —you’ll lesson me, you mangey little yapper!” His voice cracked as it rose to a high-pitched raving scream. “And what price me lessoning you? What price me skinning some of the airs and graces off you with this whip, hey ?” He let out the thong of his huntingcrop with a swirl; the red, wet shine of his under-lip was dimmed by a splash of foam. “Get out of that saddle, you dog, or by God, I’ll leg you out!” Harry’s voice ripped out of him in a full-chested roar, sudden as a thunderclap. Fancourt gave a kind of howl and lashed madly at him across his horse’s withers. Harry snatched the thong- at it touched his Shoulders, and a sudden wrench tore the stock out of Failcourt’s hand. Fancourt kicked at his chest as lie dived in. but he caught the feet and heaved, with an: “Out, you swine!” Clawing desperately at pommel and flap, Fancourt slithered out of the saddle and collapsed in a floundering heap on the ground. Harry snaked the astounded horse twice across the quarters with the whiplash; he snorted, plunged and set off for Norden at a frenzied gallop. Harry tossed the crop away and his cap after it, and then stood waiting, and breath whistling shrilly through his distened nostrils.

“Get up and take it, you scum 1 ” lie rasped out, and the other scrambled to his feet on the word. Fancourt stood six foot and scaled thirteen stone odd, but he was gross and beefy. Harry was an inch shorter, and by working hard could get down to eleven-seven, but lie was all bone mid taut muscle and quick as an adder, and had fought through to near the final of the inter-varsity middle-weights in his Cambridge days. Still, if Fancourt could box, too. it would be tough going. That would show soon, for he plunged forward with a bestial growl and the fight was on. No; there was no boxing in that first blind plunge, but the Sheer brute energy of it made it irresistible as a tumbling storm-wave. The lighter man, like a eool swimmer, let himself be washed back by it, side-stepping, slipping, or getting out of distance with springy, leaping steps, but never trying to stem it. Fancourt piled in a storm of punches, each with an animal grunt behind it, but Harry picked them neatly off upon his arms or kept at the fringe of them where their killing force had died to that of brushing spray. Not one got home so much as to shake him or break the even rhythm of his crisp footwork. Himself, he shot a rapid fire of quick, stabbing lefts through the swirl of punches, but they were going-away blows with no stopping force; they could do no more than mark, but mark they did, and Fancourt’s fleshy face was already puffed and lumpy, and discoloured with blotches of raw red. At last, side-stepping, he jolted in a stiff right-hook to the body that brought Fancourt up with a jerk and fetched a grunt out of him of quite another kind. The winding jar of it made him clow in turning, and Harry pivoted like a flash and slung out a streaking left. It took Faneourt, with one foot off the ground, full on t!he right ear and tumbled him over in a heap. Hary sank on one knee and rested, breathing deeply. It was a hot flurry while it lasted, but it was over now and a change was coming. It came when Fancourt got to his feet with a curse and stood panting heavily and swaying just a little. Harry went at him in a weaving rush, and smashed him on the mouth with a right that curved, out of nowhere. A left followed from the other edge of. nowhere and smacked on his right eye. As he quivered dizzily, a humming rain of punches pelted in that cut him and blinded him and pounded him into a reeling retreat. Harry grinned viciously as he followed with cold fury, swift and merciless; he was out to mark this beast and slash him to shreds before he laid him out for keeps.

He did it. He was the charging wave now. The hammering punches rattled in like driving hail. Fancourt was a helpless chopping-block, but Harry did not put him down; he left him on his feet, and marked him. The end came when Harry took a wavering punch on the cheek. He felt the cutting tingle of rings under Fancourt’s glove and the red flare in his eyes blazed tip wildly. He steadied himself and smashed in a savage right. That was meant for a bone-breaker. It was. Fancourt went over like a pitched ox and lay bubbling groans and pawing at a broken nose.

Harry glanced at him and walked across the trampled, blood-spattered' grass to where his cap hay beside the crop. He put the cap on, picked up the crop, and went back to Fancourt. “Sit up, Fancourt!” he rapped out. “Sit up, do you hear? Or, by God, I’ll thong you where you lie! So. Put 1 your bauds down and let's see you.”

Fancourt’s face was a red horror, a swollen, shapeless mask, seamed with gashes and oozing blood. Blood welled in thick gouts from the smashed nose and the month was a gory pulp. It hung open as Fancourt breathed in sobbing gasps and showed where three teeth had gone. They lay beside him in a puddle of blood where he had spat them out. Both eyes were cut and bleeding, and one. was closed; the other showed as a narrow slit of sullen fear. Harry looked him over carefully. ‘'You’ll do,” lie pronounced. “You can make the mile to Hurstbury all right and t'hey’ll vet you there and send you home. Now stop that moaning and listen. I’m going to disgrace myself by bullying a beaten man; that’s coming down to about your own cur-level. I think. Attend to this, I’m keeping this hunting-crop of yours, and if ever you speak to Annie Crummaek again, or send her messages, I’ll take the hide off you with it; so help me God, I will! Do you understand ? You’re to keep right out of her life. You'll obey, will you? Don’t nod, you dog; say you promise ! ” Fancourt cowered under the baleful stare. The flare had died down to a red smoulder, but the eyes were still pitiless. “I promise.” he muttered thickly. ‘■Right. If you break that promise I'll flog you wherever I find you. Now get up, I want' - to see how you walk.” Fancourt fumbled himself to his feet somehow; raked his handkerchief out clumsily and put it to his nose, and staggered off. leaving his hat behind him. Harry looked after him a moment

critically and then turned for home him self.

“He’ll do,” he muttered, and swung along briskly. When he presented himself to Tommy and. Mr. Kewley, who were sitting in peaceful conclave in the den, they stared at him in mute amazement. They had reason. His clothes were splashed with blood; his gloves, torn to ribbons, were slimy with it, and another patch of it daubed his cheekbone, where the frosty wind had clotted it over the cut cheek. One eye looked out of a purple puff. He smiled at them happily. “My hat!” gasped Tommy, grabbing at, his breath, “what slaughter-house do you come from? And what’s happened to your face?” Harry chucked the crop on the table. “That’s’ Fancourt’s,” he said. “I’ve been correcting him. Would you tell Dobby to shove the lunch on. old. chap, while Igo and get decent? News afterwards.” CHAPTER X. Time out of mind the yearly Hunt Ball of the Greydown Hunt had been held in the old Assembly Rooms at Frolingham on the Wednesday before Christinas week. Harry, wrapped to the nose, with his cut cheek well healed and his black eye long since normal, watched a white world silently past the windows of his ancient growler as he drove from Frolingham Station. The wide old High Street was spread with a snowy carpet, and the cheerful holiday bustle that filled it wqs soundless, except for gay voices and the muffled pad of footsteps and the cljsak and crunch of wheels. Real Christmas-card weather for once —thundering cold, but as jolly as the show he was going to. The show was heralded by a flare of lights outside the rooms and an awning and a red carpet across the snow, with a line of foot-stamping sightseers on either side. Harry bolted across the carpet into a heartening warmth. It took more than a north-easter to get through those solid old Georgian brick walls, and they knew how to do things comfortably, the Greydown Hunt. He was well thawed by the time he had his pumps on and went up the wide stairs. The ballroom was a green forest of holly with the berries glowing in it like little red lamps. The Hunt prided themselves on always getting plenty of berries in their holly'. Harry was early, but people were taking no chances in that weather, and already scarlet coats of the Hunt and the silken glimmer of women's dresses made a goodly maze of shifting colour under the soft lights. Others came in a steady trickle as he stood by the door, spying out friends and listening to the gentle burr of talk and laughter. One of the trickle came up to him, Thaddam’s burly bull-dog friend. “How goes it, Hawkshaw?” he said. “Be a decent binge I expect, what?” “Oh, hullo, Howship; feeling chirpy? Yes. it’s bound to be good fun, and I always think it is so deuced pretty. By the way, I’ve wanted to thank you for coming up to the scratch that way at Dowbury. Awfully good of you.” “Rot man! Public duty and all that, to remove that sort of fungus. Besides, ho was playing a damn dirty trick on you. You’ve heard he was warned off last Friday? And they’ve hoofed him out of the Hunt since, so we won’t see him here to-night, thank God. Never could stand the fellow myself. Hullo, is that the Towerson girl? So long, old chap; good huntin’.”

Harry was not long alone. A voice with a pleasant tinkle of mirth in it spoke at his elbow. “How beautiful we look in our red coat,”' it said. “Ara I too dowdy to be noticed, Harry?”

Harry turned with a jump to the plump, merry little woman beside him. “Aunt Matty!” he gasped. “Lord, how delightful! Dowdy? You bad creature, you’re fresh from the Rue de la Paix. But hold on! What are you doing here at all, anyway? And wherever’s Toozle?”

Lady Nunlash looked demure. “Toozle is downstairs powdering her nose,” she said. (To be Continued.)