“Do you want me to shoot?” snarled Bernritter.
“Easy, there, Schnitzenhauser,” spoke up McGowan; “I’ll have no shooting or rough work, but I want to see what you have in your saddle-bag.”
After the way the three men had come at him, the baron would not have shown the inside of his saddle-bags for a farm.
“I do vat I blease mit vat’s mine!” he shouted. “You attend to my pitzness altogedder too mooch to suidt me, und dot’s all aboudt id. I’m der pard oof Puffalo Pill, undt olt Nick Nomat, und dis iss a free gountry, und I’ll do vat I vant, und nodding more.”
The baron, justly indignant, was only making matters worse for himself by refusing to reveal the contents of the bag.
Suddenly something happened. The baron was the cause of it. His fist shot out—not at Jacobs, but at the wrist of Bernritter’s pistol-hand.
The six-shooter was jarred from the super’s fingers into the dust of the trail.
Thwack!
Before Bernritter had recovered from the daze caused by the baron’s first blow, the baron’s knuckles fell a second time—now on the super’s left ear.
Bernritter was knocked off his horse as clean as though he had been dropped by a rifle-bullet.