“No! I would have beaten him! Look here, Dick, when you go against a slugging football-team, when the other side plays rough-house, how do you meet them?”
“I try to call the attention of the umpire.”
“What if the umpire will not punish them?”
“Well, as a last resort, I give the boys instructions to make the game hot in the same fashion as the other fellows.”
“As a last resort! That’s it! Do you think I’m a fellow to choose to do a dishonest thing?”
“I know you would not choose it because your inclination was that way.”
“But, in a case like this, I would choose it as a last resort. It was the last resort! It was the only way to keep Arlington from winning.”
“Then, Brad, if a man robs your chicken-coops persistently, you know he robs it, yet you cannot get proof to punish him by the aid of the law, you think it just that you should turn about and rob his chicken-coops, thus making yourself a hen-thief, just to get square with him?”
Buckhart was staggered for a moment, but he recovered quickly.
“Oh, that doesn’t apply! That is a different degree of retaliation.”