He caught himself trying to speak, to utter words of encouragement to himself, but his teeth clicked together like castanets, and his whispered words fell upon terror-deafened ears.
He sprang to his feet and stood glaring at the approaching lights like some great beast trapped in a jungle. Unconsciously he shut his fingers tight, his hands forming two immense iron fists.
That unconscious action made a man of him again! Those iron fists were the fists of a prize-fighter—Hitch Diamond, the Tickfall Tiger! Courage flowed through his veins like some magic liquor.
“Hitch never th’ows up de sponge!” he growled. “I fights to de eend!”
VI
THE TICKFALL TIGER STRIKES.
Hitch sat down upon the lumber-pile and slipped quietly over the edge, preparing to descend.
He hung the seat of his trousers upon a splinter and lunged forward in a sudden panic, tearing the garment almost off his body.
As he climbed quietly down the side of the pile, he hung the leg of his trousers upon a projecting stick and ripped the leg almost up to the waistband. Dropping down upon the sawdust path, he took a step or two and found that his torn pantaloons hindered his progress, and might afford his pursuers a hand-hold for his capture.
Sorrowfully he took the garment off and stood in his giant strength, panoplied in his red underclothes!
“There he goes!” a voice called in the dark.