A moment of silence followed the loud splash Clipperton made in the water, a silence broken by a shout from Perry.
"Let's throw the tenderfoot after Clip, fellows! Into the canal with him!"
After the object-lesson which Matt had given the runners in the manly art, no one of them was eager to try conclusions alone with the "tenderfoot," but by going after him in a crowd there was little risk and an almost certain prospect of success.
Chub ran to his chum's side. Just as Perry, Spangler and the others started forward to carry out Perry's suggestion, another actor appeared on the scene, heralding his arrival with a whoop that went thundering among the cottonwoods.
"Scatter, ye onnery rapscallions! Here's me, Eagle-eye Perkins, the retired Pirate o' the Plains, drorin' a bead on every last one o' ye with ole Lucretia Borgia. Scatter, I tell ye, an' don't force me to revive the gory times that was, when I wants to be peaceful an' civilized."
Perry and his friends stayed their advance abruptly and all eyes turned on Welcome Perkins. The reformed road-agent had never looked more desperate than he did then. He was wet, and singed, and his clothes were burned in places, but the ends of his mustache stuck truculently upward, his wooden pin was planted firmly in the moist earth, and his antiquated six-shooter was swaying back and forth in the most approved border hold-up style.
In Phœnix Welcome was generally believed to be a boaster, with a past as harmless as that of a divinity student, and his loudly voiced regret for old deeds of lawlessness was supposed to result from a desire to be "in the lime-light" and to play to the galleries; but "Lucretia Borgia" looked big and dangerous, and there was no telling how far the erratic old humbug might go with the weapon.
In the canal Clipperton was already swimming to the opposite bank, apparently but little the worse for his fight and his ducking. It was clear that he was going to climb out and run for town.
"Come on, boys!" called Perry sullenly, facing about and starting along the bank at a slow trot.
The rest fell in behind him and trailed out of sight among the trees. Chub began to laugh.