Tresler passed out smiling at the youth’s ample philosophy. But the smile died out almost on the instant. A half-smothered cry reached him from somewhere in the direction of the barn. He stood for an instant with his brows knitted.
The next, and his movements became almost electrical.
Now the man’s deliberate character flatly contradicted itself. There was no pause for consideration, no thought for what was best to do. He had heard that cry, and had recognized the voice. It was a cry that summoned him, and wrung the depths of his heart. His breakfast was pitched to the ground. And, as though fate had ordained it, he beheld a heavy rawhide quirt lying on the ground where he had halted. He grabbed the cruel weapon up, and set off at a run in the direction whence the cry had come.
His feet were still encased in the soft moccasin slippers he usually wore in exchange for his riding boots, and, as he ran, they gave out no sound. It was a matter of fifty yards to the foreman’s hut, and he sprinted this in even time, keeping the building between himself and a direct view of the barn, in the region of which lay his destination. And as he ran the set expression of his face boded ill for some one. Jaws and mouth were clenched to a fierce rigidity that said far more than any words could have done.
He paused for one breathless instant at the hither side of the foreman’s hut. It was because he heard Jake’s voice cursing on the other side of it. Then he heard that which made his blood leap to his brain. It was a stifled cry in Nelson’s now almost unrecognizable voice. And its piteous appeal aroused in him a blind fury.
He charged round the building in half a dozen strides. One glance at the scene was sufficient. Poor old Joe Nelson was lying on the ground, his arms thrown out to protect his head, while Jake, his face ablaze, stood over him, kicking him with his cruel field boots, with a force and brutishness that promised to break every bone in the old man’s body.
It all came to him in a flash.
Then he leapt with a rush at the author of the unnatural scene. The butt of his quirt was uplifted. It swung above his head a full half-circle, then it descended with that whistling split of the air that told of the rage and force that impelled it. It took the giant square across the face, laying the flesh open and sending the blood spurting with its vicious impact. It sent him reeling backward with a howl of pain, like a child at the slash of an admonishing cane. And Jake’s hands went up to his wounds at once; but, even so, his movements were not swift enough to protect him from a second slash of the vengeful thong. And Tresler’s aim was so swift and sure that the bully fell to the ground like a pole-axed steer.
And with Jake’s fall the tension of Tresler’s rage relaxed. He could have carried the chastisement further with a certain wild delight, but he was no savage, only a real, human man, outraged and infuriated by the savagery of another. His one thought was for his poor old friend, and he dropped on his knees, and bent over the still, shrunken form in a painful anxiety. He called to him, and put one hand under the gray old head and raised it up. And as he did so the poor fellow’s eyes opened. Joe murmured something unintelligible, and Tresler was about to speak again, when a movement behind him changed his purpose and brought him to his feet with a leap.
Nor was he any too soon. And his rage lit anew as he saw Jake struggling to rise. In an instant he was standing over him threateningly.