Agnew pushed toward the wall and put his hands into his pockets. Badger, thinking he meant to draw a weapon, gave him no further time, but leaped on him across the table with the rush of a cyclone. Agnew went down under that rush, but he clutched the Westerner, and began to struggle, at the same time sending up a sharp call for help. In a moment the proprietor and the bartender were on the scene.
"None of this!" cried the proprietor, grabbing Badger by the shoulders, and, with the bartender's assistance, bodily dragging him off the threshing, writhing form of Agnew. Morton did not seem in any hurry to be released or rescued, however, and hung to Badger's coat and vest with the tenacity of the under dog that fails to appreciate the fact that it is overmatched.
"No fighting in here!" panted the proprietor. "This ain't no boxing-club! See! I'm glad to have gents come in and make themselves to home, but I can't allow any fighting!"
Agnew slid toward the door, seeming anxious to escape. The next moment he was out in the barroom, and then he vanished into the street.
"I'll pay for the damages," said Badger, choking down his wrath. "He went to draw a gun on me, and I jumped on him, that's all. A man is a fool to let another get the drop on him, and I allow I don't intend to. You bet I don't. I'll see him again, and when I do I reckon we'll have a settlement."
CHAPTER XII.
AGNEW'S TRICK.
When the Westerner saw Agnew again they were in one of the college lecture-rooms and an examination was in progress. Of course, they did not speak to each other. Badger believed that Agnew had kept away from him since their warlike encounter of the night before. The fact that Agnew was also a sophomore had long been a disturbing thought to the Westerner. Badger had class pride. He sometimes declared that he was a sophomore of the sophomores, but there were a number of sophomores with whom he could not and would not mix.
His seat was now close to the one occupied by Agnew, though somewhat in front of it, and he had the unpleasant feeling that a hole was being bored through the back of his head by Agnew's eyes. When the conductor of the examination looked down that way Badger could not tell whether the professor's gaze was fixed on him or on Agnew. Professor Barton had fiercely penetrating eyes, anyway, and the peculiar manner in which he looked at students in the classroom had always been especially irritating to the Kansan.