Hutchinson took a hand. Two or three other men came quickly from the office and joined in holding the struggling, panting lumber king’s son in check, Locke having released him and permitted himself to be pushed back.
“I say he’s a liar!” shouted Benton. “He knows he lies! I’ll prove it for everybody. Take your hands off me, and I’ll fight him here or anywhere else. I dare him to meet me like a man! He hasn’t the courage! He’s a coward!”
“You’re plumb anxious to get your face broke, ain’t ye?” snapped Larry Stark. “You wouldn’t last a minute with him. What’s eating you, anyhow?”
The hotel proprietor indignantly announced that he did not propose to have a fight in his house.
“I’m surprised, Mr. King, that you should start trouble here,” he said. “I ask you, as a gentleman, to quit it.”
“All right, Mr. Sawyer,” said Bent. “As you have put it up to me that way, it goes. Take your hands off me, everybody. I won’t touch him again—here.”
“I didn’t notice that you touched him at all,” grinned Stark.
“But,” declared King, smoothing his rumpled coat and straightening his necktie, “I’m not done with him, as he is due to find out. I’ll get him yet, and get him good.”
After giving Locke a parting look of venomous hatred, the young man turned toward the open door and passed out.