Cockfighter - Charles Ray Willeford [94]
I didn't. I counted the bills he handed me, shoved the wad into my hip pocket, and then held up ten fingers.
“Most of these cocks are Law Grays, Mr. Mansfield,” Peeples protested. “And three are purebred Palmetto Muffs. You know yourself there ain't no better cocks than Palmetto Muffs! Take a look first, and you'll see what they're worth. I only got ten gamecocks altogether.” I followed the old man out of the barn.
Professional cockers frequently pay off their gambling debts with gamecocks instead of cash. But this kind of payoff is normally agreed upon before a fight—not afterward. I had no objection to taking gamecocks, instead of money, this late in the season. Some hard-hitting replacements would be useful before we entered the Milledgeville Tourney, and I was on the high side of the hog when it came to settling up with Peeples.
On the way to the coop walks, Peeples stopped at the watering trough to light his pipe and to do some preliminary dickering.
“Now you seen them three Grays I fit this afternoon, Mr. Mansfield. Aces every one. You take them, and any five more of the lot and we'll be fair and square. Countin' the cash I gave you already, you're gettin' the best end and you know it.”
Giving Peeples more credit than he probably deserved, I figured his gamecocks were worth about fifty dollars a head. According to my arithmetic I would be short about two hundred and fifty dollars if I only took eight cocks. Even if I took all of them I would be one hundred and fifty dollars short of the thousand dollars he had bet me. I shook my head with a positive-negative waggle.
Feet pounded on the hard-packed ground behind me. I turned. Less than twenty feet away Tom Peeples was charging toward me with a hatchet brandished in his upraised right hand. His red face was contorted and his angry blue eye was focused on infinity.
Without taking time to think I jumped toward him instead of trying to dodge his rush, twisted my body to the left, and kicked hard at his right shinbone. Tripped neatly, he sprawled headlong in the dirt. The hatchet flew out of his hand and skittered for a dozen yards across the bare ground. Before he could recover himself I had a handgrip in his thick hair and another hold on his leather belt. With one jerk as far as my knees, followed by a short heave, Tom Peeples was in the water trough. I shifted my left hand from his belt to his hair and held him beneath the water with both hands. His legs thrashed the scummy water into green foaming milk, but he couldn't get his head up. I watched the popping bubbles break at my wrists and held him under until his feet stopped churning.
“You'd best not hold his head under too long, Mr. Mansfield,” his father said anxiously. “He'll be drownded!”
That was true enough. I didn't want to drown the man. I only wanted to cool him off so I could complete my business with Mr. Peeples and get back to Cook's Hollow. When I let go of Tom's head, he broke free to the surface, blubbering. He had lost the bandage in the water, but both eyes were closed. He took handholds on both sides of the tin-lined trough and brought his body up to a crouched position. He stayed that way, half in the water, and half out, his chin on his chest, weeping like a child. But he wasn't a child. He was at least twenty-two years old, and he had tried to kill me.
Mr. Peeples and I continued our walk toward his chicken runs. Although the old cockfighter complained, he helped me put the seven mature cocks into narrow traveling coops that were in the runs, and brought the three Grays that were already in coops over to my station wagon from his old car. It was easy to catch Icky, who was scratching in a horse stall. After cutting off the heels, I put him back in his coop.