You could pound him over the head with a
lead pipe, or drug his drink, or choke him to insensibility, or rob
him and throw him out into the street, or even drop him tidily
through a trap-door into the river flowing conveniently beneath.
Nobody bothered--unless, of course, the affair was so bungled as to
become public. The police knew enough to stay away when the drive
hit town. They would have been annihilated if they had not. The
only fly in the divekeeper's ointment was that the riverman would
fight back.
And fight back he did, until from one end of his street to the other
he had left the battered evidences of his skill as a warrior. His
constant heavy lifting made him as hard as nails and as strong as a
horse; the continual demand on his agility in riding the logs kept
him active and prevented him from becoming muscle-bound; in his wild
heart was not the least trace of fear of anything that walked,
crawled, or flew. And he was as tireless as machinery, and
apparently as indifferent to punishment as a man cast in iron.
Add to this a happy and complete disregard of consequences--to
himself or others--of anything he did, and, in his own words, he was
a "hard man to nick."
As yet the season was too early for much joy along Hell's Half-Mile.
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