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But the vision of that first fight still lingered under his eyelids, and as he watched he saw it dissolve and reshape into the series of fights which had followed. But he had blacked Cheese-Face's eye that time. That was going some. He saw them all, fight after fight, himself always whipped and Cheese-Face exulting over him. But he had never run away. He felt strengthened by the memory of that.
Cheese-Face wanted to demur, Martin could see that, but Cheese-Face's old perilous pride was touched before the two gangs. "Aw, come on," he replied. "Wot's the good of chewin' de rag about it? I'm wit' cheh to de finish." Then they fell upon each other, like young bulls, in all the glory of youth, with naked fists, with hatred, with desire to hurt, to maim, to destroy.
It was not until afterward that they learned that Cheese-Face's father had died suddenly that very day. Martin skipped on through the years to the night in the nigger heaven at the Auditorium. He was seventeen and just back from sea. A row started. Somebody was bullying somebody, and Martin interfered, to be confronted by Cheese-Face's blazing eyes.
When they came to a quiet corner, they united and held a council of war. "Eighth Street Bridge is the place," said a red-headed fellow belonging to Cheese-Face's Gang. "You kin fight in the middle, under the electric light, an' whichever way the bulls come in we kin sneak the other way." "That's agreeable to me," Martin said, after consulting with the leaders of his own gang.
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