He came on at a run, all the while venting the most diabolical curses.
When he had got nearly up to my horse’s head, he stopped a moment, and thundered out—
“Who the Hell are you, meddling with my affairs? Who the damn are—”
He suddenly paused in his speech, and stood staring in astonishment. I reciprocated that astonishment, for I had now recognised in the brutal overseer my antagonist of the boat! the hero of the bowie-knife! At the same instant he recognised me.
The pause which was the result of our mutual surprise, lasted but a moment.
“Hell and furies!” cried the ruffian, changing his former tone only into one more horribly furious—
“It’s you, is it? Whip be damned! I’ve something else for you.”
And as he said this he drew a pistol from his coat, and hastily cocking it, aimed it at my breast.
I was still on horseback and in motion, else he would no doubt have delivered his fire at once; but my horse reared up at the gleam of the pistol, and his body was thus interposed between mine and its muzzle.
As I have said, I had no weapon but the whip. Fortunately it was a stout hunting-whip, with loaded butt. I hastily turned it in my hand, and just as the hoofs of my horse came back to the earth, I drove the spur so deeply into his ribs that he sprang forward more than his own length. This placed me in the very spot I wanted to be—alongside my ruffian antagonist, who, taken aback by my sudden change of position, hesitated a moment before taking fresh aim. Before he could pull trigger, the butt of my whip descended upon his skull, and doubled him up in the dust! His pistol went off as he fell, and the bullet ploughed up the ground between my horse’s hoofs, but fortunately hit no one. The weapon itself new out of his hand, and lay beside him where he had fallen.