"Shoot me!" cried the bandit in a furious voice, as he drew the long blade. "A thousand demons."
"Yes, you! Right away too, you candidate for the gallows," rejoined the hunter, rising.
"We'll see about that,—¡Caray!"
"I guess you won't see much of it, though the principal body consarned!"
Already the hunter had jumped forward to seize the fellow by the neck and the sword belt; he raised the bag of bones as easily as if he had been a toy balloon, and getting him "on the swing," by an irresistible motion, forced him to fly twenty feet aloof.
"Excuse me not telling you, gentlemen, your friend was coming," he remarked, sarcastically.
The bandit almost flattened against the doorpost, and fell senseless just outside the opening, only his long arms within.
"Some folks air so dull, a man's obleeged to give them a warning," added the Oregonian, resuming his seat.
This feat had been executed so quickly that the spectators remained motionless with amazement; but on their anger enlivening them they sprang up, every man of them, and rushed towards the strangers with drawn swords and knives, yelling for blood and death.
The very brutality and causelessness of this fresh attack made it the more mortal and savage. These drunken vagrants were too much on their guard against each other, and, besides, knew their own opponents' abilities too well to fight among themselves, so that to fall upon strangers was always deemed more profitable. It was not, therefore, so much to avenge their fallen comrades as to obey the sanguinary instincts which the rudely fabricated alcohol had inflamed, that they renewed this charge. They cared very little whether Gallina or his blood companion had been killed by the men before them, they fought merely for the pleasure of bloodspilling. Such a conflict of twelve to two was one of those merry byplays which varied the joys of debauchery, and would afford them foundation for bragging at the refreshment bar during the fandango. These men, moreover, being mongrels, hated the pure whites inveterately, and to exterminate them would be an excessive pleasure.