"You brute! You brute!"
It was not till then that Johnnie understood what Big Tom meant to do. Crying out to him, "Oh, y' mustn't! Y' mustn't!" he rushed across to catch at the rope, and clung to it with all his might.
Barber caught him up, and once more he threw him—so that Johnnie struck a wall, and lay for a moment, half stunned. Meanwhile, with his other hand, the longshoreman thrust Cis down into her chair. Then growling as he worked, he wound her in the rope as in the coils of a serpent, and bound her, body, ankles, and arms, to the kitchen table.
Johnnie came crawling back, bruised, but scarcely knowing it; thinking only of Cis, of saving her from pain and indignity. "No, Mister Barber!" he pleaded. "Not Cis, Mister Barber! Please! It's all my fault! I fetched Mister Perkins here! I did! So blame me!"
Barber straightened. He was breathing hard, but there was a satisfied shine in his bloodshot eyes. "All right, Mister Johnnie," he answered. His voice was almost playful, but still he did not look at the boy. "It's y'r fault, is it? Well, I guess maybe it jus' about is! So y' needn't t' worry! I'll attend t' y'—no mistake!"
CHAPTER XXX
DISASTER
BARBER took his time. He even prepared to have a smoke before "attending" to Johnnie. He fumbled through his coat pockets to find his pipe, grinning all the while at Cis.
Being bound had not subdued her. She looked back at him, her face quivering, her cheeks streaming with angry tears. "Oh, yes, he'll go after you!" she sobbed. "You needn't be afraid he won't! He likes to take somebody that's little and weak, and abuse him, just as he's abused me, because I'm a girl! You don't think, Johnnie, that he'd ever take anybody his own size!"