“Hands up!” was Don’s order.
“And be blamed quick about it!” supplemented Clem.
“And you, too, Shultz!” Don addressed the on-coming and puffing old saloon keeper.
“Eh? Vat? Bah! I safe mein barn! I safe mein horses und coos und mein piks!”
“Hands up and stop! Your horses and cows and pigs are all safe. Put your hands up, if you don’t want to get some lead in you!”
Shultz stopped, but rather at the command or announcement of his more active wife than because of an order from his captors. His bumptious self-importance would not permit him to knuckle to anybody, much less to mere American youths.
“Huh! Vat? Chust poys, py gollies! Raus mit ’em! Clear oudt! I ring der necks off bodt! Put down dose pistols! Eh? Vat? Bah!”
It instantly became evident that something most radical, however unpleasant, must be done to convince this egotistical German what young America can do when started. The preparations for war, the flower of our youth enlisting, the early determination to beat the Huns had evidently made little impression on this tub of conceited Prussianism. It was the certain duty of his youthful captors to impress not only a lesson on Shultz, but to maintain their own position in the rôle they had chosen to assume. The necessity was also very apparent of repelling a weighty and sudden charge of the declared enemy, for Shultz, by reason of his calling, was given to combatting foes of almost every sort, albeit this must have been a somewhat new experience.
It was Don who, as usual, saw first the need of action and improved upon it. Your trained, competing athlete, boxer, wrestler, leader of team contests must be as quick with his head as with his hands and the event of weapons on a possibly tragic mission and against a really dangerous opponent flabbergasted the boy not a bit. Words, he saw, were entirely useless; delay might be fatal—to someone, at least.
The boy’s revolver barked and spit out its fiery protest over Shultz’s head; the tongue of flame against the dark background of the night was enough to command any minion of the Old Scratch, and Shultz proved no exception to this. The other chap, whose whiskered face the lads had recognized instantly, acted more wisely, hoping, no doubt, for some moment to arrive where strategy or surprise might count.