Harrigan | Page 2

Harrigan. The flame of his hair was like a red lamp which warned them away. Or perhaps it was his eye, which seemed to linger for a cold, incurious instant on every face that approached. He picked out the prettiest of the girls who sat at the windows chatting with all who passed. He did not have to shoulder to win a way through the crowd of her admirers.
She was a hap haoli, with the fine features of the Caucasian and the black of hair and eye which shows the islander. A rounded elbow rested on the sill of the window; her chin was cupped in her hand.
"Send these away," said Harrigan, and leaned an elbow beside hers.
"Oh," she murmured; then: "And if I send them away?"
"I'll reward you."
"Reward?"
For answer he dragged a crimson carnation from the buttonhole of a tall man who stood at his side.
"What in hell--" began the victim, but Harrigan smiled and the other drew slowly back through the crowd.
"Now send them away."
She looked at him an instant longer with a light coming slowly up behind her eyes. Then she leaned out and waved to the chuckling semicircle.
"Run away for a while," she said; "I want to talk to my brother."
She patted the thick red hair to emphasize the relationship, and the little crowd departed, laughing uproariously. Harrigan slipped the carnation into the jetty hair. His hand lingered a moment against the soft masses, and she drew it down, grown suddenly serious.
"There are three policemen in the shadow of that cottage over there. They're watching you."
"Ah-h!"
The sound was so soft that it was almost a sigh, but she shivered perceptibly.
"What have you been doing?"
He answered regretfully: "Nothing."
"They're coming this way. The man who had the carnation is with them. You better beat it."
"Nope. I like it here."
She shook her head, but the flame was blowing high now in her eyes. A hand fell on Harrigan's shoulder.
"Hey!" said the sergeant in a loud voice.
Harrigan turned slowly and the sergeant's hand fell away. The man of the carnation was far in the background.
"Well?"
"That flower. You can't get away with little tricks like that. You better be starting on. Move along."
Harrigan glanced slowly from face to face. The three policemen drew closer together as if for mutual protection.
"Please--honey!" urged the whisper of the girl.
The hand of Harrigan resting on the window sill had gathered to a hard-bunched fist, white at the knuckles, but he nodded across the open space between the cottages.
"If you're looking for work," he said, "seems as though you'd find a handful over there."
A clatter of sharp, quick voices rose from a group of Negro soldiers gathering around a white man. No one could tell the cause of the quarrel. It might have been anything from an oath to a blow.
"Watch him," said Harrigan. "He looks like a man." He added plaintively: "But looks are deceivin'."
The center of the disturbance appeared to be a man indeed. He was even taller than Harrigan and broader of shoulder, and, like the latter, there was a suggestion of strength in him which could not be defined by his size alone. At the distance they could guess his smile as he faced the clamoring mob.
"Break in there!" ordered the sergeant to his companions, and started toward the angry circle.
As he spoke, they heard one of the Negroes curse and the fist of the tall man darted at the face of a soldier and drove him toppling back among his comrades. They closed on the white man with a yell; a passing group of their compatriots joined the affray; the whole mass surged in around the tall fellow. Harrigan's head went back and his eyes half closed like a critic listening to an exquisite symphony.
"Ah-h!" he whispered to himself. "Watch him fight!"
The policemen struck the outer edge of the circle with drawn clubs, but there they stopped. They could not dent that compacted mass. The soldiers struggled manfully, but they were held at bay. Harrigan could see the heaving shoulders of the defender over the heads of the assailants, and the crack of hard-driven fists. The attackers were crushed together and had little room to swing their arms with full force, while the big man stood with his back against the wall of the cottage and made every smashing punch count.
As if by common assent, the soldiers suddenly desisted and gave back from this deadly fighter. His bellow of triumph rang over the clamor. His hat was off; his long black hair stood straight up in the wind; and he leaped after them with flailing arms.
But now the police had managed to pry their way into the mass by dint of indiscriminate battering. As the black-haired man came face to face with the sergeant, the light gleamed on a high-swung club