"Spit in his ashes!"
It was the voice of Jack Armstrong that broke the painful stillness. Immediately every man emptied the contents of his mouth, with no small force, into the fire, which voiced its protest by a vigorous spitting and sputtering.
Then Windy was given some advice.
"This ain't no place fer you. You go join them Hard Shells that's fixin' fer a ten days' fightin' match with the devil. They have the same runnin' off at the mouth as you have, but they hain't never drawed no devil's blood yet, and that's your crowd."
Windy's lips moved as if to speak.
"Roll in your molasses sucker and trampoose," was the order.
"Yeh—trampoose," was the repeated order. "Go fight the devil."
"The devil—that's the Clary Grove gang," he muttered as he turned away.
"Devil-fighter," some one said as his limping figure disappeared in the darkness.
"If the devil pays any more heed to him than he would to a skit-fly he's a blame bigger ass than I've ever took him to be," Ole Bar observed. "Let's licker up."