"It's the boy's fight, an' any man that breaks through the line will get a ball from my forty-four plumb through him. Stand back, you cattle!"
"Let 'em go, fellers. Shan will kill him in a minute," shouted one of the gamblers.
Shan Rhue had been badly shaken up by the jolt that had been his when he struck the ground. For several moments he did not stir, and Ted thought he had been knocked out.
Many of the men in the crowd knew things about Shan Rhue which Ted did not.
Rhue was considered the strongest man in the Southwest at that time. He was barely forty years old, in the prime of his life, and a man who had never dissipated. But he was a thoroughly bad man for all that, and the number of men whom he had killed had been forgotten.
His feats of strength were the talk of barrooms and bunk houses. He had been seen many times to break horseshoes with his hands, and as for bending a bar of iron by striking the muscles of his forearm with it, that was one of his ordinary tricks.
But the thing of which he was proudest was his ability to buck a man off his back. In this feat he barred none, no matter how heavy. He would get on his hands and knees, place a surcingle around his body under his arms for his rider to hold on by, and then proceed to buck.
It would seem impossible for a man to stick to him under such circumstances, and no one had been found yet who could do so.
Thus it was that those of the crowd who had witnessed this feat sometimes in a fight, and more often in friendly contest, looked to see Ted sailing through the air, and then the finish, for Shan Rhue was a merciless enemy.
Ted was now straddling the prostrate bully, who was breathing heavily, his body heaving as his lungs tried to get back into commission.