Shocky tried to halloo for Bud, but he was like one in a nightmare. The yell died into a whisper which could not have been heard ten feet.
I shall not repeat Mr. Jones’s words. They were frightfully profane. But he did not stop at words. He swept his whip round and gave little Shocky one terrible cut. Then the voice was released, and the piercing cry of pain brought Bud down the path flying.
“You good-for-nothing scoundrel,” growled Bud, “you’re a coward and a thief to be a-beatin’ a little creetur like him!” and with that Bud walked up on Jones, who prudently changed position in such a way as to get the upper side of the hill.
“Well, I’ll gin you the upper side, but come on,” cried Bud, “ef you a’n’t afeared to fight somebody besides a poor little sickly baby or a crippled soldier. Come on!”
Pete was no insignificant antagonist. He had been a great fighter, and his well-seasoned arms were like iron. He had not the splendid set of Bud, but he had more skill and experience in the rude tournament of fists to which the backwoods is so much given. Now, being out of sight of witnesses and sure that he could lie about the fight afterward, he did not scruple to take advantages which would have disgraced him forever if he had taken them in a public fight on election day or at a muster. He took the uphill side, and he clubbed his whip-stalk, striking Bud with all his force with the heavy end, which, coward-like, he had loaded with lead. Bud threw up his strong left arm and parried the blow, which, however, was so fierce that it fractured one of the bones of the arm. Throwing away his whip Pete rushed upon Bud furiously, intending to overpower him, but Bud slipped quickly to one side and let Jones pass down the hill, and as Jones came up again Means dealt him one crushing blow that sent him full length upon the ground. Nothing but the leaves saved him from a most terrible fall. Jones sprang to his feet more angry than ever at being whipped by one whom he regarded as a boy, and drew a long dirk-knife. But he was blind with rage, and Bud dodged the knife, and this time gave Pete a blow on the nose which marred the homeliness of that feature and doubled the fellow up against a tree ten feet away.
Ralph came in sight in time to see the beginning of the fight, and he arrived on the ground just as Pete Jones went down under the well-dealt blow from the only remaining fist of Bud Means.
While Ralph examined Bud’s disabled left arm Pete picked himself up slowly, and, muttering that he felt “consid’able shuck up like,” crawled away like a whipped puppy. To everyone whom he met, Pete, whose intellect seemed to have weakened in sympathy with his frame, remarked feebly that he was consid’able shuck up like, and vouchsafed no other explanation. Even to his wife he only said that he felt purty consid’able shuck up like, and that the boys would have to get on tonight without him. There are some scoundrels whose very malignity is shaken out of them for the time being by a thorough drubbing.
“I’m afraid you’re going to have trouble with your arm, Bud,” said Ralph tenderly.
“Never mind; I put in my best licks fer Him that air time, Mr. Hartsook.” Ralph shivered a little at thought of this, but if it was right to knock Jones down at all, why might not Bud do it “heartily as unto the Lord?”
Gideon did not feel any more honest pleasure in chastising the Midianites than did Bud in sending Pete Jones away purty consid’able shuck up like.
XVII
A Council of War
Shocky, whose feet had flown as soon as he saw the final fall of Pete Jones, told the whole story to the wondering and admiring ears of Miss Hawkins, who unhappily could not remember anything at the East just like it; to the frightened ears of the rheumatic old lady who felt sure her ole man’s talk and stubbornness would be the ruin of him, and to the indignant ears of the old soldier who was hobbling up and down, sentinel-wise, in front of his cabin, standing guard over himself.
“No, I won’t leave,” he said to Ralph and Bud. “You see I jest won’t. What would Gin’ral Winfield Scott say ef he knew that one of them as fit at Lundy’s Lane backed out, retreated, run fer fear of a passel of thieves? No, sir; me and the old flintlock will live and die together. I’ll put a thunderin’ charge of buckshot into the first one of them scoundrels as comes up the holler. It’ll be another Lundy’s Lane. And you, Mr. Hartsook, may send Scott word that ole Pearson, as fit at Lundy’s Lane under him, died a-fightin’ thieves on Rocky Branch, in Hoopole Kyounty, State of Injeanny.”
And the old man hobbled faster and faster, taxing his wooden leg to the very utmost, as if his victory depended on the vehemence with which he walked his beat.
Mrs. Pearson sat wringing her hands and looking appealingly at Martha Hawkins, who stood in the door, in despair, looking appealingly at Bud. Bud was stupefied by the old man’s stubbornness and his own pain, and in his turn appealed mutely to the master, in whose resources he had boundless confidence. Ralph, seeing that all depended on him, was taxing his wits to think of some way to get round Pearson’s stubbornness. Shocky hung to the old man’s coat and pulled away at him with many entreating words, but the venerable, bareheaded sentinel strode up and down furiously, with his flintlock on his shoulder and his basket-knife in his belt.
Just at this point somebody
