midnight
Consequently they would fondle and kiss each other for some minutes , and then fall to fighting and keep it up till they were just two grotesque tangles of rags and blood and tumbled hair . Then they would rest awhile and pant and swear . While they were affectionate they always spoke of each other as `` ladies , '' but while they were fighting `` strumpet '' was the mildest name they could think of -- and they could only make that do by tacking some sounding profanity to it . In their last fight , which was toward midnight , one of them bit off the other 's finger , and then the officer interfered and put the `` Greaser '' into the `` dark cell '' to answer for it because the woman that did it laid it on him , and the other woman did not deny it because , as she said afterward , she `` wanted another crack at the huzzy when her finger quit hurting , '' and so she did not want her removed . By this time those two women had mutilated each other 's clothes to that extent that there was not sufficient left to cover their nakedness . I found that one of these creatures had spent nine years in the county jail , and that the other one had spent about four or five years in the same place . They had done it from choice .