one might hurl oneself and spend one's
bitter intoleration.

Steve had stopped thinking; he had had too much of thought. Suddenly
that question which had been a riddle to him was a riddle no longer.
He had the answer, and could see himself as others no doubt had seen
him--a fool who had believed in the supremacy of fineness; a boy who
had reached for the moon. But it left the issue clearer now. He, too,
was a riverman; the degree was different, that was all. And rivermen
did not vex their brains with abstract problems; they fought with their
hands. His bowed head came back then, and the mass of men, catching
sight of the mad, glad light that flared in his eyes, rolled back to
give them room. He laughed at Harrigan. He was laughing at himself.
They heard and marveled at the pleasantry of his answer.

"Maybe you are right, Harrigan," he said. "You may be--I do not know.
I have started big things and left them unfinished. But you are wrong
for the rest of it, Harrigan, for I am going--to--finish--you!"

Men tell of that encounter now; it is already epic on the river. One
may listen to its details, and he chance into any of a half dozen
places:--Mulcahy's, Laduc's, or Whitted's that once was Brown's. And
always one will hear different details, but always one accord of
verdict. They will tell you that no man ever went through worse
vengeance and stayed a living man.

For like a blast of wrath O'Mara lifted and struck him. Harrigan's
hands had not left his hips before he met the ground, and he was back
on his feet like a bounding ball only to go down again before the
smashing impact of those blows. Caution he tried to use in rising and
they searched out his face, his chin, and drove him hither and yon.
Open fighting was not the river style of fighting and he closed this
time and wrapped his gorilla arms about this fury who fought with
lightning strokes to keep him off. His greater weight o'erbore them
both; he broke away and his hob-nailed boots, lashing out, bit the
flesh of O'Mara's temple--they tore the turf where his face had been.

There was madness in Harrigan's hideous roarings of hate, madness in
his blind rushes; but his bull-strength availed at first. He weathered
destruction and managed to close again. This time the lighter man was
ready for the scuff of those armed boots; he twisted and covered his
face with his shoulder, and only his shirt ripped open to let blood
stream from the rent. On t