“I’m a friend of yours, boys,” he said grimly, “and I haven’t much use for Ezra; but I believe in fair play. I can’t lay you all out before you get me; but I’ll do all the damage I can; and if you don’t beat the life out of me, God’s my witness, I’ll drag every mother’s son of you into court and send him up, if it takes the rest of my life and my last penny to do it. You’d better think it over.”
For a moment, the men stood irresolute. Then one of them dug his heels into his horse’s flanks and galloped off down the road. The others followed promptly, only the two dismounted men lingering to look ruefully down at Lem Tollerton’s prostrate figure. As they hesitated, he groaned, put a hand to his head, opened his eyes—and closed them again.
“There’s a pump behind the house, Nick,” Archibald said. One of the men disappeared and came back with a gourd full of water which he dashed in Tollerton’s face. The treatment worked well. Lem sat up, looked around him, and staggered groggily to his feet.
“Well, what the—” he began; but his friends took him by the arms, led him to his horse and helped him to mount.
“Nothing doing, Lem,” Nick Bullard said soothingly. “Mr. Archibald’s going to take Watts out of the State to-night. That’s good enough. Let’s fade away.”
Limp, dazed, reeling in his saddle, but sober, Lem Tollerton looked at the man who still stood on the defensive, his back to the wall and his dog at his feet.
“That’s some little knockout of yours,” he said with a sheepish grin in which there was no malice. “Don’t tell me you was trained for a painter.”
He held out a hand as he spoke and Archibald, laughing, met the hand half way.
“It’s a useful thing to have a knockout in one’s fist,” he said genially. “Come over to the shack some evening and I’ll teach it to you.”
When the last of the riders had disappeared in the darkness, he turned to Ezra who cowered beside him, still shaking with fear.