[Pg 73] The winner staggered back, braced himself and swayed a little on his feet as he sucked in great gulps of air. He wheeled savagely as he heard a shuffling step to one side and slightly behind him, but the precaution was not necessary, for simultaneously with the shuffling came Joe Cooper's snapped warning, cold and deadly. "Better stop, Stevens! I'm only lookin' for an excuse to blow you open!" Elias Stevens obeyed, standing irresolute and scowling. "You talk d——d big behind a gun!" he sneered. "Only half as big as I might, seeing it's a double gun," retorted the older man. "If it don't suit you we can turn, step off ten paces an' fire when we're ready.[Pg 74] Might as well make a good job of it while we're about it. I ain't no Mike Fink; but you ain't no Carpenter, so I reckon it's purty even." [Pg 74] "I'll take care of any objectors, in any fashion," said Tom, facing Stevens and the others. "I'll be ready fer you, Stevens, by th' time you get your weapons an' coat off, if you choose that way. Pickin' on an old man don't go while there's a younger one around; an', besides, it's my quarrel. There it is, in your teeth; take it, and eat it!" "It war a fair fight," said an onlooker in grudging admiration. He expressed the ethics of the fighting current at that time in that part of the country. Any kind of fighting, be it with hands, feet, nails, teeth or other weapons was fair as long as no outsider took a hand in it. It had been the rule of the keelboatmen and they had carried it up and down the waterways, from New Orleans to the upper Mississippi and from Pittsburg to the Rockies. Tom nodded. "All right. You can tell him that he won't get in close, next time," he said, glancing at the stirring loser. "Come on, Uncle Joe; your dinner's plumb cold an' ruined." "I'm hot enough to warm it as I chaw!" snapped his friend. "I was scared for a moment, though; fighting out in this country don't get you nothin' but a tombstone, generally, an' you'll be cussed lucky if you get that. But you did what you started out to do; I couldn't see no tobacco juice on his chin th' last time I looked." He followed his companion down the bank and as they crossed the gangplank he chuckled. "I won't eat no liver for a long time, I reckon: his face near made me sick!"[Pg 75] [Pg 75]
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