"Such a statement, coming from a fellow like you, amounts to high praise, Dexter," Dick retorted doughtily.
"None of your impudence, now, Dick Prescott! I've stood all the insolence from you that I'm going to allow."
"My! How big the man talks to the small boy!" taunted Dick. "And he had to drag the boy away off here, so that there wouldn't be a chance of another boy coming along. A man of your caliber, Dexter, may be brave enough to face one boy, when he's angry enough, but you wouldn't dare say 'boo' if one of my boy friends were here to back me up."
"I'll stop that sort of impudence right now," growled Dexter, stung more deeply by the taunts than he would have been willing to let the boy guess. "I'm pretty savage in my mind against you, at any rate, and I may as well let some of it out!"
Whack! smack! thump! Dexter began savagely to vent all of his bottled-up spite against young Prescott, striking him repeatedly, and with such force that the lad was soon aching all over.
Dick fought back as best he could, but, pinned down as he was, and in the grip of one three times as strong as himself, Dick could get in an effective blow only now and then. Such blows as he did land only served to fan Dexter's wrath to greater fury—and the boy suffered accordingly.
It would have been a brutal beating, under any circumstances, that Dick received. In his helpless condition it was doubly brutal.
"Now, do you think you've got enough to hold you for a while?" Ab. Dexter demanded, as he paused, panting.
"I'm just thinking about the time when you'll get it all back with interest!" snapped young Prescott.
"Oh, then you haven't had enough—yet?"