“Don’t let me keep you,” went on the man, and Sidney saw he was heavy, black-browed and strongly built. “Don’t let me keep you. Is it the little yellow-haired one or the other? I like the little one best myself, Miss——”
“Keep my cousins’ names out of your mouth,” said Lanty, his quick temper in a flame, “or I’ll break your neck for you.”
“If all’s true that’s told for true, you’re better at breaking hearts than necks. There’s a little girl over Newton way—but there! I’ll tell no tales; but to say you’re going to have both your cousins! You’re a Mormon, Lanty, that’s what you are.”
“Be quiet! Be quiet!” some of the men said. “Good-bye, Lanty, better be off; he don’t mean nothing.”
But the big man, sure of the prestige of his size, thinking, evidently, that Lanty would not dismount, was not to be silenced. Perhaps he was hardly quite sober. He was a machine agent in the neighbourhood, and had bidden unsuccessfully against Lanty for a horse. His next words took him too far.
“I ain’t sayin’ anything to put his back up! All I say is that them cousins of his can smile at other folks as well as at him, and why shouldn’t they? I don’t like a girl no less because she——” He never finished.
Lanty was off his horse like a flash. His fist caught the big man under the jaw, lifting him almost off his feet and sending him crashing down. Lanty waited with hands clenched for him to rise. The crowd swayed, those close at hand giving way, those upon the outskirts pressing forward. The horse, so suddenly released, reared and swung round on its hind legs, and just then Sidney saw a tall, finely-formed young woman appear almost under the plunging horse, twist a strong hand in the bridle, and wring both curb and snaffle so viciously that the beast gave his head to her guidance. She wheeled it towards Lanty.
“Lanty,” she said, laying her free hand upon his arm; “Lanty.”
“Go into the house, Vashti,” he said. “What are you doing here?”
“You are not going to fight,” she said, “with him?”