“Come on, boys!” cried Nick to his two assistants. “We’ll have to take a hand in this.”
Bob Gordon, as he chose to call himself, was holding back his foes with considerable skill and pluck, but one pair of fists, no matter how well they are employed, cannot do much good against twenty pairs.
The men opposing him did not care much about fair play. All they wanted was to beat down this bold young man, who set at defiance the whole crowd, and defended the name of the absent foreman, Douglas, with a courage worthy of one with eight generations of American blood in his veins.
Some of the men were trying to pin down Gordon’s arms so that he would have no driving room, while some of the others, reaching over, struck viciously at his head with their fists, knowing he could not reach them when hemmed in so thoroughly.
“They’ll be taking iron bars to him after a while, I guess, chief!” remarked Patsy. “Let’s get into this!”
Nick was already into it. A finished boxer, the detective bestowed a scientific tap here and there on the faces and necks of those who were crowding Gordon, thus compelling them to give him breathing room.
At this moment, Chick caught a mean-looking fellow trying to sneak in an uppercut on Gordon’s undefended face, while he was busy with half a dozen others.
“I reckon I’ll just hand you this!” observed Chick.
As he spoke, he sent a good, hard crack to the sneak’s chin, doubling him up like a jackknife, and sending him backward at full length. Chick’s jab had been a “rock me to sleep,” as Patsy expressed it.