rooster with
a
kick like a hay-tedder. At six months he made
Art Smythe's red boar look like a monkey, and won the
first bets for the fellows.
Art's red boar was a s1y devil. He was one of those
chicken-eating hogs. He would bait his old snout with mash
and lie down in the sun, snoring to beat the band. The dumb
hens would come up to pick at his snout. He'd snap them
up before they could let loose more than a cackle. Art
strung a wire fence around the hoghouse. The old devil
worked his snout through and tore the hens to pieces and
dragged them inside.
Sandy was ready to bet his last shirt that the Boy would
whip the hog. Art had even money on his hog. Ring held
back. But when Ella lost her job, he brought Orphan Boy
to Art's place. They hid behind the corncrib. Ring had his
shotgun ready, loaded with rocksalt in case the boar was
too fast.
Orphan Boy stood on the fence, whetting his bill. He
fluttered down into the pen. The boar lay on his slabside,
his ugly snout, bristles and all, well baited. Orphan Boy
found something in the corner of the pen. He scraped
around like a pug getting rosin on his shoes, dug up sad.
The boar opened one little red eye, snored, shoved up closer.
The Boy circled some droppings, picked up a stick, dropped
it, scratched a wing around the boar. The boar didn't budge.
Orphan Boy craned his neck to examine the boar's cork-
screw tail. He gave the boar a swift jab in the bag. The
boar scrambled up with a snort. He wheeled around, stood
still with his snout poked out, dozing. Orphan Boy strutted
up and talked. The boar snapped. The Boy exploded, flying
at the hog with spurs out. He landd on his back. The hog
dashed up and down the pen, snorting and kicking. Orphan
Boy rode him, flapping his wings. The hens cackled. Over
the fence shot Orphan Boy into the hens. Ring got excited
and let the gun speak. It poured the rock~:1lt into the hog's
ass. The fellows rolled in the grass, roaring.
At eleven months Orphan Boy made his first kill. He was
pitted in the wagon-run of Len Raven's barn. Dreadnought,
the other cock, came from another county. He wa, a battle-
scarred red cock with a snaky head, a horn colored beak,
and gaffs almost three inches long. The owner was a loom-
fixer.
The cocks squared off under lanterns in the barn. The
red cock made the first move, feinting, ripping with his left
claw at Orphan Boy's bristling neck. He shot at Orphan Boy
like a cannonball, driving him back against the crouched men.
The Boy ducked. He overflew Dreadnought.
Dreadnought
turned under him to wreck him. His bloody heel punched
out a few feathers. They squared off once more. The smaller
cock caught Orphan Boy in the head. Orphan Boy staggered
back, dribbling blood.
Tarr tightened his sweaty paw on Ring's neck. The
other men and the lint-heads, who had come down with the
loom-fixer, urged on the battling cocks. Sandy groaned, "He's
tasting blood. Mebbe that'll fire him, fire him sure."
Orphan
Boy
now changed his attack. He tried for the
little veteran's head which hadn't been trimmed well. He
ducked, beat off a rain of blows, caught him by the head.
He clung to the head like a bulldog. driving his claws,
PARTISAN
REVIEW AND ANVIL
doublebarreled,
at Dreadnought's chest. Dreadnought
shook
him off. The Boy sidestepped again, once more getting him
by the head. He topped him and flung the spurs into his back.
He pulled the head down and hammered out an eye. The
plucky little Red jerked up one wing to protect the head,
waded in again. Orphan Boy slashed at the Wing. He got
him in the other eye. Down went the blinded cock. He spun
around on his back, his legs still driving.
Orphan'
Boy
shook himself, spotted Ring. He stalked over, picked at a
button on Ring's pants and squatted down in front of him.
Other fights came so fast after this that you didn't have
enough time to wash the cock, water him, rest him properly
in a dark coop. He fought in villages throughout the county,
crossed the county line into the mountains,
winning every
fight, uncoupling wings, breaking legs, putting money into
the feHaws' pockets.
Tarr took snapshots of Orphan Boy and put them
up in his shop and in the pool hall. The Boy's Virtues were
spread all over the country. His pullets and stags were on
every farm. Tarr said, "The cock's bringing us prosperIty
while all the lousy politicians can't even scratch for us."
Ring got himself a secondhand Ford with a cracked
mulHer which sounded like a tractor.
He bought himself
pointed yellow shoes, and Ella, silk stockings. He took her
family for rides, treated to ice cream. He went to ch~!rch
with the family and listened to the preacher skin the sinners
alive. He sat in the Sunday school with the sawmill boss,
Lumpkin the feed man, and Sheriff Luke Smiley. He dropped
change on the plate Orphan Boy had cut up another cock for.
The old woman was still set against Ring. Now she
blamed him for Pierce's working only two days a week in
the sawmill. Hadn't Ring gotten the old man excited about
that devilish rooster and brought him down to the barber
shop when he should be digging in the garden and th:nking
of next day's work? Wasn't it enough that Ring kept com-
pany with that bunch of shiftless men? Sure, Ring was try-
ing to get the old man under the thumb of that awful bar-
ber, who had no more sense than last year's birdnest and
was always backbiting against the mill boss, and everybody
else more a Christian and a man than he.
The men learned about this.
Tarr said, "Don't
blame her for not liking me, but
what's she got against the cock? If it wasn't for a cock, she
wouldn't be cutting up now."
The whole shop roared.
"Sure." Tarr clapped Ring on the shoulder. "You're un-
happy, big boy, because you ain't your own boss. I been a
weighman'
in a gin, millhand,
glass blower, cured myself
of the can. That's why every time one of you bums gets
dosed up he comes whining to me to be cured. One thing I
did learn, and thAt's a man can't be cured of misery while
he's got a foreman, a boss riding him. That's why I be-
come a hair butcher. And that's why I ain't got no woman
and her mother. When I need my comfort, I pay for it.
I'm my own boss. There ain't nothing in the world like being
your own boss. Ring, you go tell Brady to go to hell, git
yourself a farm, raise game birds from Orphan Boy. You
git married and tell the old woman to go fish."
