As the boy reached for his weapon, a gruff voice from the cabin doorway commanded him to face about and hold up his hands.
“And hold ’em up empty, too!” the gruff voice said.
There was nothing for Clay to do but to obey. It was with an effort, however, that he kept his arms extended. The leering eyes of the man with the face of a fox who stood before him with a revolver pushed almost into his face caused such hot surges of rage to fill the boy’s brain that he came near facing the peril and springing upon the outlaw.
Mose, levee bred and wise to the unlawful purpose of the intruder, moved stealthily toward the shelf where Clay’s revolver lay, in plain sight. In another second it would have been in the little fellow’s hand, with what result Clay could not imagine, but the outlaw saw the movement and edged forward, still keeping the revolver leveled at Clay, much to the latter’s disgust.
“Here, you coon!” the man shouted, “get over in that corner and stay there! Move, or I’ll give you a lift!”
The brute gave Mose a savage kick in the side as he spoke. It was one thing for Clay to be placed in a humiliating position, to be threatened with a gun, but it was quite another for him to stand inactive and see a boy brutally treated! Disregarding all his thoughts of the uselessness of the move, the boy sprang at the outlaw.
Although only a boy, Clay was muscular and in training. The man he had attacked was stronger and heavier than the lad, but he was slower of movement, and the result of the conflict might have been a victory for Clay if the two had been permitted to continue the struggle unmolested.
While the meager furniture of the little cabin was being broken and tossed hither and yon by the combatants, while Teddy was jumping about, eager to get hold of one of the fighters—as he had been taught to do when the boys were wrestling—and while Mose was doing his best to get over to the shelf where the revolver lay, there came a quick jar on deck, a jar caused by the bunting of a boat against the hull of the Rambler, and then hurrying footsteps on the forward deck.
Clay fought all the harder when the sounds reached his ears, for he was sure that Alex. and Jule had returned, and that short work would now be made of the intruder. He was gradually securing a hold on his enemy which would have ended the battle when he was seized and lifted—by a giant, it seemed to him—clear of the cabin deck and held there while the outlaw slowly regained his feet and picked up his weapon.
Clay saw that it was the other side that had received the reinforcements, and motioned to Mose to remain quiet and keep out of sight. He feared that further activity on the part of the negro boy would add to his punishment.