Betting went on all over the place for ten or so minutes. Most bets were less than a dollar. Two men started talking about a five-dollar bet. The place grew quiet when everybody stopped and listened.
"Which one do you like?" Mr. Seth Vest said, waving a ten-dollar bill in Simon Boggwater's face. Seth went around the room waving the bill in folks' face, and asking which chicken they would bet on. I knew that most of the men didn't have that kind of money. When he asked Will Gorman which chicken he liked, Will reached for the wallet in his overall pocket. "I like the brown and red."
Seth stepped back. "Eh, eh. Me too, I guess we cain't bet." In a flash Seth was over near where I was.
Will Gorman turned and went right on talking to some farmers, as if he knew what Seth would do.
"Seth, he does that all the time," a man said. "He ain't made a wager, to my knowledge, since they built the first barn back in the twenties."
I saw Perd Driddle come in the other side of the barn. Perd was a little wisp of a man whose spectacles sat on the end of his nose. He sat down on the front row about ten feet from me.
It was a known fact that Seth Vest harbored a grudge against him. Perd had come home from the first big war and married the girl Seth had been courting. "Seth was gathering twigs and making a nest when Perd ran off with his hen," Dad had said, when Seth and Perd were talked about at the house.
Seth stared at Perd and reached in his bib pocket so fast I thought for sure he was about to pull a gun. Even though I was a good ways from him it scared me.
In place of a gun, Seth jerked out a money clip, ruffled through it, and yanked out a fifty-dollar bill. I had never seen one. It looked as big as a bed sheet. He waved it in the direction of Perd. I could tell he wanted to go over and mock Perd with the bill, but the place was so crowded he couldn't make his way over.
When the two men finished fastening the steel to their chickens' legs, they backed up and stood against the little wall of the pit. All at once, the pit boss dropped his arms to his sides. The two men walked to the center of the pit, holding the chickens out like they intended to swap them. The men stared at each other like they were fixing to fight. An hour earlier, I had seen them leaning on the back of a wagon talking like old friends. They rubbed the chicken's beaks together. Each rooster commenced pecking at the other.
The pit boss raised his arms and gave another signal. "Pit'em!"
The two men dropped their chickens to the ground. Both roosters commenced fighting like you have never seen. Flying into each other, they hit so hard they both fell backwards. They jumped up and went right back at it, each one trying to climb up the other's chest. That went on for maybe three minutes. Neither chicken seemed to be tiring. All at once, the red rooster got his steel gaff hung in the side of the other. Neither one could get to their feet.