“Got your orders, did you?” taunted Morey. “You’re a fine bunch here in this town. I’ll see you all, later. And I’ll make you all feel so small you can jump through a finger ring. And mark me,” added the boy, “if you ever get yourself mixed up with this Aspley place deal I’ll come for you first.”
He turned and was about to leave the room when something prompted him to look around. The lawyer, white of face and trembling like a leaf, had lunged forward and an iron paper weight whizzed past the boy’s head striking and shattering the white frosted glass in the door. Morey dodged, stumbled, recovered himself and then, his own anger getting the better of him, he, too, sprang forward. The crazed lawyer was reaching for some object on his disordered desk. Morey could not see what it was—it might be a deadly weapon. He himself was unarmed.
Alarmed and frenzied the boy threw himself forward, leaped on the lawyer’s back, clasped him in his strong young arms just as he caught sight of a revolver and then hurled the struggling man with all his might to the floor. There was a crash as Judge Lomax’s head struck the wooden cuspidor. The revolver rolled under the table and [Morey ran from the office].
It was now noon. Lee’s Court House streets were deserted. Hastening to the front of Barber’s Bank, where he had left Betty, Morey was about to mount when, to his surprise, Captain Barber and Major Carey suddenly appeared in the door of the bank. Morey was fighting mad.
“I’ve just left your friend, Judge Lomax,” exclaimed the boy impudently. “He’s on the floor of his office with a busted head. He delivered your message all right.”
“Morey,” said Major Carey sharply and sternly. “You’ve lost your senses. You’re going too far. You’re making the mistake of your life.”
“Somebody’s making a mistake—Judge Lomax did. You gentlemen have been running this town so long that you think you own it. I reckon the people here think you do. I don’t.”
