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He sprang back with shrill laughter. "Begolly! and will your honor be whistling the hornpipe for me to be dancing of?" he cried. SPANG! went his fist into Wessner's face, and he was past him into the swale. "And would you be pleased to tune up a little livelier?" he gasped, and clipped his ear as he sprang back. Wessner lunged at him in blind fury.
At the camp that morning, Wessner's conduct had been so palpable an excuse to force a discharge that Duncan moved near McLean and whispered, "Think of the boy, sir?" McLean was so troubled that, an hour later, he mounted Nellie and followed Wessner to his home in Wildcat Hollow, only to find that he had left there shortly before, heading for the Limberlost. McLean rode at top speed. When Mrs.
The Dutchman dealt thundering blows that sometimes landed and sent Freckles reeling, and sometimes missed, while he went plunging into the swale with the impetus of them. Freckles could not strike with half Wessner's force, but he could land three blows to the Dutchman's one.
Duncan told him that a man answering Wessner's description had gone down the west side of the swamp close noon, he left the mare in her charge and followed on foot. When he heard voices he entered the swamp and silently crept close just in time to hear Wessner whine: "But I can't fight you, Freckles. I hain't done nothing to you. I'm away bigger than you, and you've only one hand."
He snatched the revolver from Wessner's belt, and stooped for Jack's. At that instant the Angel rushed past. She tore the gag from Freckles, and seizing the rope knotted on his chest, she tugged at it desperately. Under her fingers it gave way, and she hurled it to McLean. The men were crowding in, and Duncan seized Wessner.
Drawing a handkerchief from a back pocket, Freckles tenderly wiped Wessner's eyes and nose. "Come, Freddy, me child," he admonished Wessner, "it's time little boys were going home. I've me work to do, and can't be entertaining you any more today. Come back tomorrow, if you ain't through yet, and we'll repate the perfarmance. Don't be staring at me so wild like!
His right, with the hand shattered, hung helpless at his side, while his revolver lay at Freckles' feet. Wessner's weapon was in his belt, and beside him Freckles' club. Freckles' face was white, with colorless lips, but in his eyes was the strength of undying courage. McLean pushed past the Bird Woman crying. "Hold steady on them only one minute more!"
And they were not popular with the audience, but the boy preacher who did Laertes was exceedingly blessed with the gift of tongues. Brother Polonius seems to have been a sort of presiding elder, and, when his exhortation rose, the chickens in Mike Wessner's coop, in the meat-market downstairs, gave up hope of life and lay down to be cut up and fried for breakfast.
He unbuttoned the band of his right sleeve, and turning it back, exposed the blue-lined, calloused whiteness of his maimed arm, now vividly streaked with contusions, while in a series of circular dots the blood oozed slowly. Here Wessner had succeeded in setting his teeth. When Freckles saw what it was he forgave himself the kick in the pit of Wessner's stomach, and cursed fervently and deep.
Freckles, seeing an opening, forgot the laws of a gentleman's game and drove the toe of his heavy wading-boot in Wessner's middle until he doubled and fell heavily. In a flash Freckles was on him. For a time McLean could not see what was happening. "Go! Go to him now!" he commanded himself, but so intense was his desire to see the boy win alone that he did not stir.
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