“I am, if that’s your name—and it seems to fit you! But you are not fly enough!”
He opened eyes and mouth on me, stepped back a few feet, and visibly swelled.
“Well, my-y-y Ga-a-awd!” he wailed. “If that ain’t using the butt end of the whip on a willing friend, may I never sort webbin’s again!”
There was truly something sincere in his distress. But that sudden warming-up to me on the prairie after I had manhandled him, his unaccountable friendliness, his jacking his job for a few days in order to dog me about Breed City—the whole thing was too openly a plant.
“You’re a good actor. No wonder you’re in the stage business, Flye,” was my poor joke.
He looked at me for a full minute. Then he turned on the other man.
“It’s you, you horn-gilled wump, with your sashay prices and your drunken man’s gab—it’s you that has put me in wrong with a friend,” he squealed. “He thinks I’m like you are! He thinks I’m in mush with you on a brace! I’ll show him and you!” He leaped forward and began to kick the prospector with fury. The latter was a big and rather torpid person and he seemed to be in a sort of daze at first, and stood still while Mr. Flye kicked him. Then he turned and knocked Mr. Flye down; he picked him up and knocked him down again.
It struck me that if this were acting between friends it was getting too realistic. The driver’s face was bloody and he lay where he fell, his eyes closed.
I jumped between and pushed the prospector away. He struck at me and I was obliged to hit him a clip or two before he would hold off. We had a fairly good audience, but fisticuffs in Breed, when the muddy season made tempers short, seemed to stir only mild interest.
I found Mr. Flye on his knees and “weaving” weakly when I turned to him.