Caution and mercy departed from the chauffeur’s mood; and he drew back his fist to strike the boy—and found it caught by the hard hand of Jim Irwin.
“You’re too angry to punish this boy,” said Jim gently,—“even if you had the right to punish him at all!”
“Oh, cut it out,” said a fat man in the rear of the car, who had hitherto manifested no interest in anything save Ponto. “Get in, and let’s be on our way!”
The chauffeur, however, recognized in a man of mature years and full size, and a creature with no mysterious needle in his nose, a relief from his embarrassment. Unhesitatingly, he released Newton, and blindly, furiously and futilely, he delivered a blow meant for Jim’s jaw, but which really miscarried by a foot. In reply, Jim countered with an awkward swinging uppercut, which was superior to the chauffeur’s blow in one respect only—it landed fairly on the point of the jaw. The chauffeur staggered and slowly toppled over into the soft earth which had caused so much of the rumpus. Newton Bronson slipped behind a hedge, and took his infernally equipped dog with him. The grader gang formed a ring about the combatants and waited. Colonel Woodruff, driving toward home in his runabout, held up by the traffic blockade, asked what was going on here, and the chauffeur, rising groggily, picked up his goggles, climbed into the car; and the meeting dissolved, leaving Jim Irwin greatly embarrassed by the fact that for the first time in his life, he had struck a man in combat.
“Good work, Jim,” said Cornelius Bonner. “I didn’t think ’twas in ye!”
“It’s beastly,” said Jim, reddening. “I didn’t know, either.”
Colonel Woodruff looked at his hired man sharply, gave him some instructions for the next day and drove on. The road gang dispersed for the afternoon. Newton Bronson carefully secreted the magic muzzle, and chuckled at what had been perhaps the most picturesquely successful bit of deviltry in his varied record. Jim Irwin put out his team, got his supper and went to the meeting of the school board.
The deadlocked members of the board had been so long at loggerheads that their relations had swayed back to something like amity. Jim had scarcely entered when Con Bonner addressed the chair.
“Mr. Prisidint,” said he, “we have wid us t’night, a young man who nades no introduction to an audience in this place, Mr. Jim Irwin. He thinks we’re bullheaded mules, and that all the schools are bad. At the proper time I shall move that we hire him f’r teacher; and pinding that motion, I move that he be given the floor. Ye’ve all heared of Mr. Irwin’s ability as a white hope, and I know he’ll be listened to wid respect!”
Much laughter from the board and the spectators, as Jim arose. He looked upon it as ridicule of himself, while Con Bonner regarded it as a tribute to his successful speech.