“Well, so it went. So it went for five enduring months and each one of these fights was so much like the fight before it, that it's not worth my while trying to describe 'em for you boys. Every month, on the day, here would come Singin' Sandy Riggs, humming to himself. Once he came through the slush of a thaw, squattering along in the cold mud up to his knees, and once 'twas in a driving snow storm, but no matter what the weather was or how bad the road was, he came and was properly beaten, and went back home again still a-humming or trying to. Once Harve cut loose and crippled him up so he laid in a shack under the bank for two days before he could travel back to his little clearing on the Grundy Fork. It came mighty near being Kittie, Bar the Door with the little man that time. But he was tough as swamp hickory, and presently he was up and going, and the last thing he said as he limped away was fur somebody to give the word to Harve Allen that he'd be back that day month. I never have been able to decide yet in my own mind, whether he always made his trips a month apart because he had one of those orderly minds and believed in doing things regularly, or because he figured it would take him a month to get cured up from the last beating Harve gave him. But anyhow, so it was. He never hurt Harve to speak of, and he never failed to get pretty badly hurt himself. There was another thing--whilst they were fighting, he never made a sound, except to grunt and pant, but Harve would be cursing and swearing all the time. “People took to waiting and watching for the day--Singin' Sandy's day, they began calling it. The word spread all up and down the river and into the back settlements, and folks would come from out of the barrens to see it. But nobody felt the call to interfere. Some were afraid of Harve Allen and some thought Singin' Sandy would get his belly-full of beatings after awhile and quit. But on the morning of the day when Singin' Sandy was due for the eighth time--if he kept his promise, which as I'm telling you he always had--Captain Braxton Montjoy, the militia captain, who'd fought in the war of 1812 and afterwards came to be the first mayor of this town, walked up to Harve Allen where he was lounging in front of one of the doggeries. I still remember his swallowfork coat and his white neckerchief and the little walking stick he was carrying. It was one of these little shiny black walking sticks made out of some kind of a limber wood, and it had a white handle on it, of ivory, carved like a woman's leg. His pants were strapped down tight under his boots, just so. Captain Braxton Mont-joy was fine old stock and he was the best dressed man between the mouth of the Cumberland and the Mississippi. And he wasn't afraid of anything that wore hair or hide. “'Harvey Allen,' he says, picking out his words, 'Harvey Allen, I am of the opinion that you have been maltreating this man Riggs long enough.'