“I'll just fool you two hombres a whole lot,” he thought, and stooping, picked up a small stone. On the instant the two men, having approached within thirty feet of their quarry, made a rush for him.
Their charge was swift, but swift though it was, the little stone which John Stuart Webster hurled was swifter. It struck the young man fairly between the shoulderblades with a force sufficient to bring him out of his sentimental reverie with a jerk, as it were. He whirled, saw the danger that threatened him, and—sprang to meet it.
“Bravo!” yelled Webster, and ran to his aid, for he had seen now that it was to be knife work. Tragedy instead of melodrama.
The man with the puckered eye closed in with such eagerness it was apparent to Webster that here was work to his liking. The young man raised his light cane, but Pucker-eye did not hesitate. He merely threw up his left forearm to meet the expected blow aimed at his head, lunged forward and slashed viciously at the young man's abdomen. The latter drew back a step, doubled like a jack-knife, and brought his cane down viciously across the knuckles of his assailant's right hand.
“So it is thou, son of a pig,” he called pleasantly in Spanish. “I fooled you that time, didn't I?” he added in English. “Thought I would aim for your head, didn't you?”
The blow temporarily paralyzed the assassin's hand; he dropped the knife, and as he stooped to recover it with his left hand, the young man, before retreating from Pop-eye, kicked Pucker-eye in the face and quite upset him.
“Stop it!” shouted Webster.
Pop-eye turned his head at the outcry. The man he was attacking fell into the position of a swordsman en garde, and thrust viciously with the ferule at the face of the pop-eyed man, who, disregarding Webster's approach, seized the cane in his left hand and with a quick, powerful tug actually drew his victim toward him a foot before the latter let go the stick.
Before he could give ground again Pop-eye was upon him. He grasped the young man by the latter's left arm and held him, while he drew back for the awful disembowelling stroke; as his long arm sped forward the hook of John Stuart Webster's heavy cane descended upon that flexed arm in the brook of the elbow, snagging it cleverly.
The knife never reached its destination!