The man who had been reading the paper gazed curiously at the spectacle. He had recognized the whoop of Rearing Bill as that of a green timber woodsman, a logger from the pine, spruce or hemlock belt somewhere. Now he saw the big fellow clearly and, staring at him in surprise, recognized him.
“Why, you damned skunk!” he muttered, just like that, and started straight across the barroom, bare handed.
There was a gasp of amazement among the other spectators. Rearing Bill heard or felt the difference in the echo. He froze for an instant as he cunningly turned his eyes to look out of their corners. He discovered the swift approach of the spectator and turned to look.
Rearing Bill’s face convulsed. A regular gorilla expression of ugliness and cruelty crossed his features. He had clicked his teeth and shaken his tangled mane, fluffing up his steel black whiskers. At sight of the interrupter he shrank in precisely the same way that Odd Jobbing Det had done, and lines of cruel satisfaction changed to the same quivering of terror and pleading.
“I didn’t mean nothing! I didn’t mean nothing! I were jes’ foolin’!” Rearing Bill’s voice rose higher and shriller. “I wa’n’t really goin’ to hurt ’im, Mister Benson! Hones’—honest!”
“You lie!” the other exclaimed, cuffing the big face backhandedly. Under cover of the stinging blow, Benson snatched the huge revolver from the loose grasp of the bully’s hand.
Then with the barrel of the weapon Benson pounded the big fellow across the floor, backward. Rearing Bill yelped, cried out, choked and at last turned to run. Contemptuously, Benson gave him a kick; and then as the bully yelled he fired the big gun at the floor under him so that the huge boots bobbed high and thumped to frantic efforts at escape, crashing out into the night. Outside Rearing Bill raced, plunging to the swayback drayhorse, and he rode furiously away in the dark, heading up Snake Creek.
When he was out of hearing, his nervous yelps lost away in the Bad Land distance, the crowd came back into Squint Legere’s barroom to see what miracle had changed the echo of Rearing Bill’s whoops. They found the other stranger, Benson, unloading Rearing Bill’s revolver of the yellow stained ivory handles. Bystanders whispered excitedly at what this fellow had done, barehanded, right after calling Rearing Bill a skunk.
“My lan’!” Tid Ricks gasped. “I never hoped to see anybody brave as that—my, gracious! He just acted like he wa’n’t ’fraid of nothing in the world, yes, sir! Why, he slapped that big feller ’fore he even took his gun away! It was the nerviest thing anybody eveh did get to see!”
Squint Legere did the honors. Benson just must take a drink.