Free Giant by Edna Ferber

left, quickly he pushed back his chair and stood facing Luz. He grasped her wrist. “What’s the matter with him! What happened!” He shook her arm a little as though to hurry her into speech.
    “He smashed up the Beauty Parlor at the hotel, he threw chairs into the mirrors and shot out the lights like an old Western movie——”
    “Beauty Parlor! What the hell do you m——”
    “Oh, you know—where we have our hair done and everything. Don’t be—anyway, he wrecked it and now he’s looking for Jett he says he’s going to smash his face he says it’s Jett’s hotel and his orders——”
    “Why! Why! Why! Quick!”
    “Juana went down to keep an appointment to have her nails done. She’d telephoned, and given her name of course. When she got down there the girl at the desk looked at her and said they didn’t take Mexicans, she came upstairs and Jordy went——” She stopped abruptly. “There comes Jett. Look. He’s been drinking.”
    With a sudden blare that jolted the eardrums the loudspeaker went on. From the two bands there was a ruffle of the drums. Jett Rink came through the door marked Office. Private. White dinner clothes, a tightly little boutonniere of bluebonnets on his lapel. The curiously square face, thin-lipped, ruthless, the head set too low on the neck that in turn was too massive for the small-boned body. Hewalked, not as a man who has authority and power but as a man does who boasts of these. On his right walked a man, on his left walked a man, the two looked oddly alike in an indefinable way, as though the resemblance came from some quality within them rather than from any facial kinship. Their clothes seemed too tight as though they covered muscles permanently flexed, and their shaves were fresh, close and unavailing. Their faces impassive, the cold hard eyes regnant as searchlights.
    “Hi, Jett!” bawled the cowboy movie star.
    “Which is he?” the King inquired, not very astutely.
    Congressman Bale Clinch answered somewhat impatiently. “The middle of course. The other two are strong-arms.”
    Now that the sound system had been restored the girl in red and the accompanying band were in full swing with a childish song which the state had adopted as its own. The tune was that of the old ballad, “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad” to words which someone had written.
    The eyes of Texas are upon you,
All the live-long day.
The eyes of Texas are upon you,
You cannot get away ….
    Jordy Benedict reached the dais, he leaped upon it nimbly, crept beneath the table opposite his father’s empty chair like a boy playing hide-and-seek, he bobbed up to face Jett Rink. At the tables below the dais the diners had got to their feet leaving the slabs of red roast to congeal on their plates.
    Jordy Benedict called no names. He looked absurdly young and slim as he faced the three burly figures.
    “Stand away,” he said quietly, “and fight.” His arm came back and up like a piston. A spurt of crimson from Jett Rink’s nose made a bizarre red white and blue of his costume. A dozen hands pinned Jordy’s arms, the flint-faced men held Jett Rink, the two glaring antagonists, pinioned thus, strained toward each other like caged and maddened animals.
    Jett Rink jumped then, swinging hammock-like between the two guards whose arms held his. His feet, with all his powerful bulk behind them, struck Jordy low with practiced vicious aim so that the grunt as the boy fell could be heard by the guests of honor on the dais even above the blare of the band.
    Quick though Bick was, Leslie was there before him, kneeling on the floor beside her son. For the moment he was mercifully unconscious. The first exquisite agony of this blow had distorted the boy’s face, his body was twisted with it. His eyes were closed.
    Bick, kneeling, made as though to rise now. His eyes were terrible as he looked at the panting Jett Rink. But Leslie reached across the boy’s crumpled form, she gripped Bick’s arm so