Mouthing an inarticulate oath, the owner of the dogs himself was now jumping forward, face convulsed and corn-hook lifted. Whether he was attacking Douglas or his aged rescuer neither stopped to ascertain. Both acted. The empty shotgun jabbed for the assailant’s face, the barrels crunching solidly against his forehead. The whip-butt swung down with the force of a blackjack on his crown. His eyes rolled, his legs caved, and he fell.
The young man and the old one swept their surroundings. Two dogs were fairly blown apart. The third still hung limp from Douglas’ shirt. The man lay in a queer huddle, his corn-hook sticking in the ground beside him, where it had fallen on its point. The woman, shrieking with rage, now was running at them with a similar blade.
“I told ye, Nat,” the old man said harshly, as if the fallen man could hear him, “if ye didn’t learn them dogs manners or tie ’em up somebody’d fix ’em. I told ye I’d do it myself the next time they come for me. Ye can say g’by to this here one too.”
Wherewith he clutched the dangling hound by the scruff of the neck and, in one wrench, tore it away from Douglas’ shirt. He flung it down, hopped up, and landed with all his weight on the brute’s neck. Under his heavy brogans sounded a crack of bones.
“’Lizy, ye better hold yer hosses,” he coolly cautioned the woman, now close at hand. “I don’t want to handle ye rough, but sure’s God made little apples I’ll crack ye one ’less’n ye drop that ’ere cawn-hook. I’m a-warnin’ ye.”
The thin-faced female, whose coarse hair and high cheek-bones hinted strongly at Indian blood, screamed out again. She burst into a torrent of vituperation that brought a red wave across the face of the younger man and a corresponding flush into the leathery cheeks of his fighting-mate. But she made no attack with the ugly blade in her hand. Standing over the huddled Nat, her bony bare toes digging at the turf like the claws of a cat, she vented her fury in language which would have brought swift physical retaliation if she had been a man. And the pair stood silent and took it.
“Ye’ll pay for them pups, Eb Wilham—ye’ll pay dear!” she foamed at the last. “Nat’ll take it outen ye! Him an’ Snake’ll fix ye—an’ ye too, ye sneakin’ ’tective! Ye mizzable pair o’ sneakers, ye better live together an’ sleep together an’ watch out fer each other now!”
She bent and squinted at her mate. The two men looked suddenly at each other. The hillman stared as if seeing the other for the first time. The newcomer stared straight back, taking his first comprehensive view of the two-handed old fellow and realizing what the woman’s threat signified. For a minute old blue eye and young blue eye held straight and steady. Then on each mouth quirked a smile.
“If you’ve run out of words, I’ll say a few myself,” clipped Douglas, turning to the woman. “If there’s any more trouble coming from this it comes to me, not to him. I never saw him before, and he doesn’t know me. So you can tell your nigger man to take it out on me. As for Snake, I knocked him cold awhile ago and I can do it again. I’ll be around here for some time, and anybody wanting the same dose Snake got can come and get it. That’s all.”
He nodded to the old man and turned away. He took three steps before Eb Wilham stopped him.