you any longer. If you don’t get out of here at once I’m going to call 38 and let them take you.” This was the police station. It awoke unpleasant memories. He had spent the day in jail on two similar occasions. He became more violent than before, screamed a vile name at her, and made a motion to strike her. At this moment, Luke entered; he was on his way to Gant’s.
The antagonism between the boy and his older brother was deep and deadly. It had lasted for years. Now, trembling with anger, Luke came to his mother’s defense.
“You m-m-m-miserable d-d-degenerate,” he stuttered, unconsciously falling into the swing of the Gantian rhetoric. “You ought to b-b— b-be horsewhipped.”
He was a well grown and muscular young fellow of nineteen years, but too sensitive to all the taboos of brotherhood to be prepared for the attack Steve made on him. Steve drove at him viciously, smashing drunkenly at his face with both hands. He was driven gasping and blinded across the kitchen.
Wrong forever on the throne.
Somewhere, through fear and fury, Eugene heard Ben’s voice humming unconcernedly, and the slow picked tune on the piano.
“Ben!” he screamed, dancing about and grasping a hammer.
Ben entered like a cat. Luke was bleeding warmly from the nose.
“Come on, come on, you big bastard,” said Steve, exalted by his success, throwing himself into a fancy boxing posture. “I’ll take you on now. You haven’t got a chance, Ben,” he continued, with elaborate pity. “You haven’t got a chance, boy. I’ll tear your head off with what I know.”
Ben scowled quietly at him for a moment while he pranced softly about, proposing his fists in Police Gazette attitudes. Then, exploding suddenly in maniacal anger, the quiet one sprang upon the amateur pugilist with one bound, and flattened him with a single blow of his fist. Steve’s head bounced upon the floor in a most comforting fashion. Eugene gave a loud shriek of ecstasy and danced about, insane with joy, while Ben, making little snarling noises in his throat, leaped on his brother’s prostrate body and thumped his bruised skull upon the boards.
