“Let it stand—let it stand as it is,” whispered Barrett, huskily, clutching at the arm of Britt as that furious gentleman surged past him. “If we tackle the young fool now he’s apt to blab all he knows about me. It’s a ticklish place. Handle it easy.”
“I’ll handle it to suit myself!” stormed Britt, yanking himself loose. “You set back there if you want to, and play dry nurse to your twins—your family scandal on one arm and your governor’s boom on the other. But when it comes to my own crew and my private business, by the Lord Harry, I’ll operate without your advice!”
He began to call on his men, rallying them with shrill cries. He ordered them to surround the camp and take the rebel. In the next breath he bade MacLeod to go up the ladder and pull Tommy down.
“Poet” Larry Gorman, who had been gradually edging near the spot which he had sagely picked as the probable core of conflict, set himself suddenly before Colin MacLeod as the boss advanced towards Wade with a look in his eye that was blood-lust. MacLeod had a weather-beaten ash sled-stake.
“Sure, and a gent like him don’t fight with clubs,” said Gorman. “We’ve all heard about his lickin’ ye once, and man-fashion, too! Now, go get your reputation. Start with me.” The redoubtable bard poked his shillalah into MacLeod’s breast and drove him suddenly back. At this overture of combat the men for Enchanted came up with a rush. They met the “Busters” face to face and eye to eye.
“We’re all axe-tossers together, boys!” cried Gorman. “Ye know me and you’ve sung my songs, and ye know there’s no truer woodsman than me ever chased beans round a tin plate. Now, Britt’s men, if ye want to fight to keep a free man a slave when he wants to chuck his job, then come and fight. But may the good saints put a cramp into the arm of the man that fights against the interests of woodsmen all together!”
Under most circumstances even such a cogent argument as this would not have stayed their hands. But coming from Larry Gorman, author of “Bushmen All,” it made even the “Busters” stop and think a moment. And when MacLeod was first and only in renewing hostilities—obeying Britt’s insistent commands—Gorman again held him off at the end of his bludgeon, and shouted:
“Oh, my cock partridge, you’re only brisk to get into the game because you’re daffy over a girl. You’d wipe your feet on Tommy Eye or any other honest woodsman to polish your shoes for the courtin’ of her.”
It was a taunt whose point the “Busters” realized and relished. It was even more forceful than Larry’s first appeal. Some of the men grinned. All held back. But for MacLeod it was the provocation unforgivable. He drew back his arm and swept his stake at Larry’s head. That master of stick-play warded and leaped back nimbly.
“Fair, now! Fair!” he cried. “They’re all lookin’ at us, and there can’t be dirty work.” Gorman’s face glowed, for he had won his point. His wit had balked a general combat. His massing fellows had tacitly selected him as their champion. He had put the thing on a plane where the “Busters” were a bit ashamed to take part. They turned their backs on Britt in order to watch the duellists more intently. They knew that Larry Gorman was vain of two things—his songs and his stick-swinging.