“I mean,” said McCarthy, very distinctly, “that you’ve stacked the cards and—”
Further than that he did not speak, for Harrison’s gun was out and almost in position before McCarthy could grapple him and seize his wrist. At the same moment Flynn grabbed the pistol itself and strove to wrench it from his fingers.
Even with two men holding him, and they were both powerful men, the gambler struggled mightily, and for a moment seemed about to wrench himself free. The three were all over the room.
It was harder to keep Long Mike out of a fight than to drag him away from a bar or poker game. Moreover, though he held McCarthy in contempt as a gambler, he knew him for a man who spoke the truth, and leaping to his feet he started forward.
Davis, however, sprang up at the same instant, and, stretching out his foot, he tripped the big man and threw him headlong on the floor. Drawing a knife from his belt, he threw himself on the prostrate form and raised his arm for a blow. In the excitement nobody noticed that the door had been opened.
“Whurroo!” said Gallagher, and threw himself into the fray.
There was no time to find a weapon, and he carried none, but he was handy with his feet, and a well-directed kick not only lamed Davis’s elbow for a week, but knocked the knife from his hand half-way across the room. It would have been between Long Mike’s ribs but for the kick. Disarmed and disabled, the desperado was no match for the two men, one of whom was grappling him from beneath while the other was continuing to kick from above.
At this moment the pistol went off and Gallagher fell to the floor. Flynn had got possession of the weapon, but it had been discharged in the transfer and Gallagher’s head was directly in line. Having it, however, Flynn used it promptly and stunned Harrison with a single blow, practically ending the shindy, for Long Mike made short work of Davis when he realized the situation.
“Is he kilt?” he inquired, anxiously, as Flynn and McCarthy bent over Gallagher. “Sure he saved my life when this blackguard was shtickin’ me like a pig.”
“I think he is,” said McCarthy. “There’s a hole in his head the size of a shtove door.”