Billy got to his feet, bent and turned the Kid’s face up,—a bloody, bruised face,—and set his foot on the heaving breast. “Stay where you are till I speak.” His words hit like bullets. “Within a week you get out another dodger and take back the slam you gave that girl. You find the key to that desk, and return the money you stole from me—”
“Stay where you are till I speak.”
Billy, blinded by his passion and sure of his ground, flung out his accusations, forgetting that money is visible, ponderable; that evidence to its theft must be equally convincing.
But the Kid did not forget. He was cowed but not beaten. He reached out a thick, dirty forefinger and interrupted. “Go to the man who printed that dodger if you want retraction, not to me. You’ve called me a thief, you son of a gun! You’re the thief, and I’ll prove it! I’ll have you in the pen—”
Reginald and Sis Jones, who had stayed to discuss Billy’s plight, now came on the scene in company with Redtop in time to see Billy spring again on the prostrate Jim.
“Hold on, Billy! Do you strike a man when he’s down?”
Reginald’s cool voice checked Billy’s wild fury, that had leaped again at the Kid’s accusation. He looked up fiercely. “He called me a thief, Reg,—a thief!”
“What evidence have you for saying that, Jim?” Reginald asked sternly while helping him to his feet.
“I’m not giving my case away.”