"Goodness!" Johnnie's exclamation had in it a note of pure chagrin. His cowboy had not won! "What did he do t' y'?" the boy wanted to know, almost blamefully.
"Do?" repeated the cowboy, wrathfully. "Say! He went and busted my fountain pen!" He began feeling his way toward the stove. When he got as far as the mattress, he first hunted his handkerchief and applied it to the stopping of that nasal stream, then, grunting painfully, he lay down.
"Git all y' wanted?" inquired the longshoreman.
"My land!" returned the Westerner. "I got a hay-wagonful!"
"Man dear!" gasped Father Pat, making for the wash basin.
Johnnie felt suddenly heartsick. Would not the tale of One-Eye's defeat scatter in the neighborhood? and if it did, would not his own proud position be threatened along with the cowboy's? Whipped by Tom Barber! That was all right for a kid! But for a man who wore hair on his breeches——!
The boy sank back in the morris chair. "I'd sooner Big Tom'd whip me again!" he declared under his breath.
Barber was mocking One-Eye. "Yes, man dear!" he said. "Heaven didn't make y'r arm as strong as y' wanted it, eh?" He was very cocky, and pushed out either cheek importantly with his tongue.
Father Pat was now washing a rapidly closing eye on a sadly battered countenance. "Shure, Heaven'll deal with ye in its own good time!" he promised, nodding a portentous head.
Big Tom snorted. "He's been waitin' and waitin'," he observed; "—ever since he first met me. That's why he give me such a hidin'!"