"You'll pick yourself up first, Starr Wiley, and come back for more if you want it. You know what's coming to you!"
Billie started in sheer amazement. There before her, sprung from nowhere, was her companion of yesterday, the smug young man who had wanted to play the chaperon, and who had seemed surprised and shocked when she revealed her identity. Her eyes blazed.
"How come you to butt in on this little argument?" There was an ominous note in her slow drawl. "No one asked you to sit in, Señor Duenna, I'm playing my own hand. You durn fool, don't you see I had the coyote covered all the time?"
Her hand moved from the hip pocket of her khaki skirt and he saw the glint of the sun upon a small but business-like, blunt-nosed revolver.
Kearn Thode stepped back, his face crimson at the name she had dubbed him as well as at the unexpectedness of her attack, and at that moment Starr Wiley leaped, snarling, from the undergrowth.
The girl stood fascinated. She had seen many rough-and-tumble fights in the history of Limasito, but the clean-cut scientific way the two lean, lithe, well-matched figures sprang to combat thrilled her.
Wiley was the heavier of the two, but indolence and dissipation had softened him and Thode was in the pink of condition. After the first blind onslaught he steadied himself and parried, waiting for the opening his opponent's uncontrolled rage would give him. It was soon forthcoming; a side-stepped lunge left Wiley's pallid face exposed and Thode caught him fairly on the point of the jaw. He shot across the road, crumpled into the ditch and lay quivering and still, as his victim of the day before.
Panting, Thode turned to the girl.
"I am sorry," he said stiffly. "I didn't mean to butt in on your game, but, having started, I had to finish."
She seemed not to have heard. Her eyes were shining and a little spot of clear rose showed in her cheeks as she held out her hand.