“Put them guns away or—or——” Hi Stevens attempted to bluster, but he could not bring himself to finish the sentence. While the stranger was small, those two guns were big, the hands that held them steady, and the eyes behind them very hard.
“Yuh was sayin’ I was a wampus?”
The voice was gentle, but it sounded to the two bullies like a death knell. Their courage oozed away visibly, and their hands fell limply from the butts of their guns. Hi Stevens choked and stammered, then spoke hesitatingly:
“Naw, I never said that.”
“Then it was your friend. Now, mister, yuh’ll have to teach him manners. Yuh’ll have to show him it ain’t nice to go callin’ strangers names. Just so he won’t forget it, yuh pull his ear with one hand an’ slap him good with the other.”
The spectators gathered closer; this was good—the bullies being bullied. The two roughs’ friends near the door of the Ace High moved restlessly, and one or two of them handled their guns; but the boy in the tattered jeans ran across the road and whispered something to them, and their desire to interfere seemed to vanish.
Anderson and Stevens stared at the little stranger as if they had suddenly become half-witted and did not understand his words. He repeated them again more sharply this time, and when Hi Stevens made no move to obey, his right-hand gun roared, and the bully, white-faced, hopped about on one foot and stared at his left boot, the heel of which had vanished.
“Hey, mister, don’t do that,” he whined.
“Do what I tole yuh to, or I’ll take one of your toes off next,” the little man warned.
Instinctively Hi Stevens knew that the threat was no bluff. Moved by resentment toward Big Anderson, who had started this ill-fated horseplay, Stevens suddenly reached over and, before his astonished friend could recover from his stupor, yanked one of Anderson’s ears and clouted him across the cheek with his other hand.