It was not all over. As soon as the latter was relieved from the embrace, he broke away and made for the pecân tree;—as rapidly as if the injured limb no longer impeded him.
The hunter suspected his intent. Standing over six feet, he saw the bloody knife-blade lying along the cloak. It was for that the mustanger was making!
Zeb bounded after; and once more enfolding the madman in his bear-like embrace, drew him back from the tree.
“Speel up thur, Pheelum!” shouted he. “Git that thing out o’ sight. The young fellur hev tuck leeve o’ his seven senses. Thur’s fever in the feel o’ him. He air gone dullerious!”
Phelim instantly obeyed; and, scrambling up the tree-trunk took possession of the knife.
Still the struggle was not over. The delirious man wrestled with his rescuer—not in silence, but with shouts and threatening speeches—his eyes all the time rolling and glaring with a fierce, demoniac light.
For full ten minutes did he continue the mad wrestling match.
At length from sheer exhaustion he sank back upon the grass; and after a few tremulous shiverings, accompanied by sighs heaved from the very bottom of his breast, he lay still, as if the last spark of life had departed from his body!
The Galwegian, believing it so, began uttering a series of lugubrious cries—the “keen” of Connemara.
“Stop yur gowlin, ye durned cuss!” cried Zeb. “It air enuf to scare the breath out o’ his karkidge. He’s no more dead than you air—only fented. By the way he hev fit me, I reck’n there ain’t much the matter wi’ him. No,” he continued, after stooping down and giving a short examination, “I kin see no wound worth makin’ a muss about. Thur’s a consid’able swellin’ o’ the knee; but the leg ain’t fructered, else he kudn’t a stud up on it. As for them scratches, they ain’t much. What kin they be? ’Twarnt the jegwur that gin them. They air more like the claws o’ a tom cat. Ho, ho! I sees now. Thur’s been a bit o’ a skrimmage afore the spotted beest kim up. The young fellur’s been attakted by coyoats! Who’d a surposed that the cowardly varmints would a had the owdacity to attakt a human critter? But they will, when they gits the chance o’ one krippled as he air—durn ’em!”