Part 14

Freckles and I did the best we could, fighting all that was our size and some bigger; but after a couple of hours it got so that most any one could lick us. Kids that was afraid to stand up to him the day before could lick him easy, by now, and dogs I had always despised even to argue with began to get my number. All you could hear, on every side, was: “Is it your _own_ blood, Mr. Watson?”

And at noon we went home, but Freckles didn't go into the house for dinner at all. Instead, he went out to the barn and laid down in the hay, and I crawled in there with him. And he cried and cried and choked and choked. I felt sorry for him, and crawled up and licked his face. But he took me by the scruff of the neck and slung me out of the haymow. When I crawled back again, he kicked me in the ribs, but he had on tennis shoes and it didn't hurt much, and anyhow I forgave him. And I went and crawled back to where he was and nuzzled my head up under his armpit. And then he cried harder and hugged me and said I was the best dog in the world and the only friend he ever had.

And then I licked his face again and he let me and we both felt better, and pretty soon he went to sleep there and slept for an hour or so, with his head on my ribs, and I lay there quiet so as not to wake him. Even when a flea got me, I let that flea bite and didn't scratch for fear of waking him. But after a while that flea got tired of me, and crawled over on to Freckles, and he waked natural. And when he waked, he was hungry, but he didn't want to go into the house for fear the story had spread to the grown-ups and he would have to answer questions. So he found a couple of raw turnips, and ate them, and a couple of apples, only they were green, and he milked the cow a little into an old tin cup and drank that. And in a little while he begins to have pains, and he thinks he is getting heart's disease and is really going to die, but he says to himself out loud if he dies now he won't get any credit for it, and he would have enjoyed it more if he had died while he still thought Little Eva was young and beautiful and probably going to marry him in the end.

But after awhile it seems turning from heart's disease into some kind of stomach trouble; so he drinks some stuff out of a bottle that was left in the barn last spring when Bessie, the old roan mare, had the colic, and whether it is heart's disease or stomach trouble, that stuff cures him. And him and me drift along downtown again to see if maybe the kids have sort of begun to forget about it a little.

But they hadn't. It had even spread to some of the grown-ups. We went into Freckles's father's drug store, and Mr. Watson told Freckles to step around to the post office and ask for his mail. And the clerk in the post office when we come in, looks at Freckles very solemn and says:

“Ah, here is Mr. H. Watson, after a letter! Will you have a letter written in blood?”

So Freckles told his dad there wasn't any mail, and we sneaked along home again. That night at supper I was lying on the porch just outside the dining room and the doors were open, and I heard Freckles's dad say:

“Harold, would you like to go to the show to-night?”

“No, Pa,” says Freckles.

His mother says that is funny; it is the first time she ever heard him refuse to go to a show of any kind. And his father asks him if anything special has happened that makes him want to stay away from this particular show. I guess when his father says that, Freckles thinks his father is wise, too, so he says he has changed his mind and will go to the show after all. He didn't want to start any argument.

So him and me sneaks down to the show grounds again. It is getting dark, but too early for the show, and every kid we know is hanging around outside. And what Freckles has had to stand for in the way of kidding beforehand is nothing to what comes now. For they all gets around him in a ring and shouts: “Here is the bridegroom! Here is Mr. H. Watson come to get married to Little Eva! And the wedding invitations are wrote in his own blood! His own blood! His own blood!”

And the grown-ups beginning to go into the show all tell each other what the kids are getting at, and we hear them laughing to each other about it. Him and me was about the two downest-tail-and-head-hanging-est persons you ever saw. But we stayed. There wasn't no place else to go, except home, and we didn't want to go home and be asked again if there was any special reason for staying away from that particular show.

And right in the midst of all the yelling and jostling around, a kid about Freckles's size comes out of the show tent and walks over to the bunch and says:

“Now, then, what's all this yelling about Little Eva for?”

All the kids shut up, and this show kid says to Freckles:

“Was they yelling bridegroom at _you?_”

Freckles, he was down, but he wasn't going to let any out-of-town boy get away with anything, either. All our own gang had him licked and disgraced, and he knew it; but this was a stranger, and so he spunked up.

“S'pose they was yelling bridegroom at me,” he says. “Ain't they got a right to yell bridegroom at me if they want to? This is a free country.”

“You won't be yelled bridegroom at if I say you won't,” says the show kid.

“I'll be yelled bridegroom at for all of you,” says Freckles. “What's it to you?”

“You won't be yelled bridegroom at about my mother,” saws the show kid.

“Who's being yelled bridegroom at about your mother?” says Freckles. “I'm being yelled at about Little Eva.”

“Well, then,” says this kid, “Little Eva is my mother, and you got to stop being yelled at about her.”

“Well, then,” says Freckles, “you just stop me being yelled at if you think you're big enough.”

“I could lick two your size,” says the show kid. “But I won't fight here. I won't fight in front of this crowd. If I was to fight here, your crowd might jump into me, too, and I would maybe have to use brass knucks, and if I was to use brass knucks, I would likely kill someone and be arrested for it. I'll fight in private like a duel, as gentlemen ought to.”

“Well, then,” says Freckles, “if any one was to use brass knucks on me, I would have to use brass knucks on them, and I won't fight any one that uses brass knucks in private.”

“Well, then,” says the show kid, “my brass knucks is in my trunk in the tent, and you don't dast to follow me and fight with bare fists.”

“My brass knucks is at home,” says Freckles, which was the first I knew he ever had any, “and I do dast.” So each one searched the other for brass knucks, and they went off together, me following. The fight was to be under the bridge over the crick down by the school-house on the edge of the woods. But when they got down there, the strip of sand by the side of the crick was in shadow. So they went on top of the bridge, to fight in the moonlight. But the moonlight was so bright they were afraid they would be seen by some farmer coming into town and maybe told on and arrested. So they sat down on the edge of the bridge with their feet hanging over and talked about where they had better fight to be private, as gentlemen should. And they got to talking of other things. And pretty soon they began to kind of like each other, and Freckles says:

“What's your name?”

“Percy,” says the show kid. “But you better not call me that. I'd fight if I was called that out of the family. Call me Spike. What's your name?”

“Well, then,” says Freckles, “1 don't like mine either; mine is Harold. But call me Freckles.”

Spike says he wished he had more freckles himself. But he don't get much chance for freckles, he says; his mother takes such awful good care of all the complexions in their family.

“Well, then,” says Freckles, “I think your mother is an awful nice lady.”

Spike, all of a sudden, bursts out crying then and says how would Freckles like it if people wrote notes to _his_ mother and was yelled at about her? And Freckles says how would _he_ like it if _he_ was the one was yelled at, and he never had any idea the lady was grown up and had a family, and he got to sniffling some himself.

“Spike,” he says, “you tell your mother I take it all back. You tell her I was in love with her till I seen her plain off the stage, and since I have seen her and her family plain, I don't care two cents for her. And I'll write her an apology for falling into love with her.”

Which he done it, then and there, in the moonlight, jabbing his fountain pen into his wart, and it read:

_Dear Little Eva. Since I seen your husband and son I decided not to say anything about matrimony, and beg your pardon for it. This is wrote in my blood and sets you free to fall in love with who you please. You are older and look different from what I expected, and so let us forget bygones._

_Yours truly,_

_H. Watson._

“Spike,” says Freckles, when they were walking back to town together, chewing licorice and pretending it was tobacco, “do you really have some brass knucks?”

“No,” says Spike. “Do you, Freckles?”

“No,” says Freckles.

And they went back to the tent together and asked the gang if they wanted any of their game, and nobody did, and the disgrace lifted.

And I felt so good about that and the end of the love-affair and everything, that right then and there I hunted up that Burning Deck dog and give him the licking of his life, which I had never been able to do before.

THE END