“You will listen to me till I have said what I am going to say,” she flung at him. “You do all this—you honest men,” she turned to the others, searing them with her scorn. “And why? So that you can force Garry Knapp, who has the best farmlands anywhere around here—and who will make more than good some day, in spite of you, yes, in spite of you, I say—to turn over his lands to you for a song, an amount of money that would hardly pay him for the loss of one little corner of it——”
“Say, are we goin’ to stand here and take this?”
“Yes, you are—Stanley Blake!” Dorothy flamed at him, and the man retreated before her fury. “And then, when this boy defies you, what do you do? Act like honest men? Of course you do! You threaten to ‘put the screws on’ until he is too weak to defy you, a boy against four—honest—men! If that is honesty, if that is bravery, then I would rather be like that slimy toad out in the woods who knows nothing of such things!”
“Hold on there, you!” George Lightly started forward, his hand uplifted threateningly. “You call us any more of those pretty names and I’ll——”
“What will you do?” Dorothy defied him gloriously, her eyes blazing. “You dare to lay a hand upon me or my friend or my brother,” instinctively her arm tightened about Joe, “and Garry Knapp will hound you to the ends of the earth. Hark! What’s that?” She paused, head uplifted, listening.
They all listened in a breathless silence while the distant clatter of horses’ hoofs breaking a way through the woodland came closer—ever closer!
“Garry!” Dorothy lifted her head and sent her cry ringing through the woodland. “We are over this way, Garry, over this way! Come qui——”
A HORSEMAN BROKE THROUGH THE UNDERBRUSH. IT WAS GARRY.
“Dorothy Dale to the Rescue.” Page [237]