"If I'm a coward, what possible glory would there be in your fighting me?" Dick smiled.
"Let me have the sneak!" begged Dave, stepping forward, but Dick pushed his churn back. Tom Reade took tight hold of Dave's right arm.
With the prospects of an encounter vanishing, Bert Dodge's valor went up tenfold.
"Get up your guard!" he roared. "I've been taking boxing lessons and I want to teach you one or two things."
"I haven't been taking any boxing lessons lately," Dick remarked with composure.
"Oh, that's why you're afraid to act at all like a man, is it?" scoffed Bert in his harshest voice.
"No; my main reason for not caring to fight you, Dodge, is that
I don't like the idea of soiling my hands."
"What's that?" screamed Bert in added fury. "You insult me—-you—-you mucker?"
"If I'm a mucker, then you don't need to feel insulted at my opinion of you," Dick suggested, with a smile.
But this hesitancy on the part of Prescott was filling Bert Dodge with more valor every instant.