“Yeah––run! You’re the one that done it––now run! That’s like a Lorrigan––do your dirty work and then crawl out and let somebody else take the blame! That kid never––”
“Aw, come back and fight, you big sneak!” A drunken voice bellowed hoarsely, and a gunshot punctuated the command.
“Go on––get on the other side of the schoolhouse. Run! The fools will all start to shooting now!”
Mary Hope stopped stubbornly. “I will not!” she defied him; and Lance without more argument lifted her from the ground, stooped and tossed her under the wagon, much as he would have heaved a bag of oats out of the rain.
“Don’t you move until I tell you to,” he commanded her harshly, and ran back, diving into the thick of the crowd as though he were charging into a football scrimmage.
“Who was it called me back to fight? Put up your guns,––or keep them if you like. It’s all one to me!”
In the dim light he saw the gleam of a weapon raised before him, reached out and wrenched it away from the owner, and threw it far over his shoulder into the weeds. “Who said a Lorrigan run? I want that man!”
“I said it,” bellowed a whisky-flushed man whose face was strange to him. “I said it, and I say it agin. I say––a Lorrigan!”
He lifted his gun above the pressure of excited men and women. Lance sprung upward and forward, landed on some one’s foot, lunged again and got a grip on the hand that held the gun. With his 160 left hand he wrenched the gun away. With his right he pulled the man free of the crowd and out where there was room. The crowd––men, now, for the women had fled shrieking––surged that way.