“Say, d’you reckon you’re talkin’ to me?”
“That’s what I am dead sure of. It’s you I am talking to; and unless you change your line of conversation for the better pretty quick I’ll quit talking.”
The big young man in the road flung down his ax and pack, uttered a string of blistering language and spat on the palms of his hands.
“What’s the idea?” queried Akerley, still smoking his pipe, still hunched forward with his elbows on his knees.
The other raised and flipped his feet about as if in the opening steps of a popular rustic dance, and at the same time began to chant in sing-song tones of a marked nasal quality.
“Stan’ up an’ take yer medicine, ye pore skunk,” he chanted. “Git up onto yer hind legs so’s I kin knock ye off’n ’em again, ye slab-sided mistake. Git onto yer splayed feet, or I’ll sure lam ye in the lantern right where ye set.”
“I don’t know if you want to dance or fight,” said Akerley, calmly but clearly, “but I’ll tell you this—I don’t feel like dancing. And I warn you not to start anything else, for I am a smart man with my hands.”
“Git up,” sang the other, continuing to jink about on his booted feet without shifting his ground. “Git up so’s I kin swing onto ye. Stan’ up on yer feet, dad blast ye, or git down onto yer prayer-handles an’ say ye’re bested already—for I’m Ned Tone, the heaviest hitter in Injun River.”
“So be it—but never say that I didn’t warn you,” replied Akerley, laying aside his pipe.
Then he complied with Ned Tone’s reiterated request with speed and violence suggestive of the releasing of tempered springs within him. His feet touched the ground in the same instant of time that his right fist touched the cheek of the heaviest hitter on Injun River. That was a glancing blow. Ned Tone turned completely around in his tracks, but he did not fall. He staggered and lurched. He recovered his balance quickly and plunged at his antagonist. He spat blood as he plunged, for his cheek had been cut against his teeth. He flailed a murderous blow—but it returned harmlessly to him through the non-resistant air. He jumped again, quick as thought, with a jab and a hook.