And here an amazing melodrama was enacted before his staring eyes, almost before he could think. He saw the sinister two slink through his garden, saw them hurl themselves upon the young guard, beheld a waving chaos of arms and legs, heard a thrown pistol clink upon the cinders—heard with his tense nerves and his straining faculties, though his sealed ears denied him tidings of the fight. Then he saw that one of the strikers held the guard prone, and that the other was burrowing swiftly under the yellow tower. It was at that moment that Henry saw another sight which turned him cold and numb and made him forget every grievance he had ever known against the B. & A. He saw a glint of red hair at the upper window of that block tower. He saw Mary Hill standing there—her body poised in terror. In one hand she held the pistol he had given her. In the other she clutched a frightened yellow kitten.
Like a wild old warlock Henry Hornbone hurled himself into the mélée. The dynamiters were strong men; they were desperate and they were armed with deadly brass knuckles and coupling pins. But Henry was armed with primitive rage, which goes a long way in a pitched battle. His head was barked, a fist had crashed into his teeth, a knee had found his stomach and he was feeling a strange lightness in his head—a sort of airiness which persisted in lifting him into the ether, persisted in weakening the dogged grip he had on a tough, whiskery neck. He felt himself giving in; he rallied and snatched great, aching breaths into his bursting lungs, pounding monotonously on a confusion of struggling legs with his stout old hobnailed boots, when he realized that another force had entered into the fray. A red-headed harpy, screaming and dancing, brandishing a big black pistol was circling the fight, dragging at the vindictive person who was endeavoring to choke the young soldier's breath out, battering futile fists upon unfeeling backs, sobbing in impotent wrath.
It was then that Henry dragged out of the tortured thinness of his throat a terrible, curdling scream.
"Bean him!" he yodeled, the yell cutting the air like a knife, "Bean both of 'em—with the gun."
And Mary Hill obeyed.
She beaned both of them with such efficiency that when the young soldier had struggled up and spit out his broken teeth and righted his outrageously disarranged apparel and found his gun, the whiskery pair of malcontents were still sprawled, unconsciously content, in the damp gloom of Henry's pie-plant row.
Henry himself sat up, conscious that certain very vital localities on his person had been woefully maltreated, sure that he would never be able to get a whole breath again, and if by chance he did, it would sure jolt his tortured ribs loose. But he grinned. The grin was jagged and a bit gory, but it persisted. And Mary Hill gave him a wavery, slightly tremulous smile. She still held the pistol, but Henry saw with admiration that she held it muzzle down, harmless but ready. She was a good one! And she might have been killed—blown to pieces like those ragged cross ties at Hodges! Henry struggled up.
"You better fetch somebody," he shouted at the young soldier, who was still a trifle bewildered. "You better fetch a gang to look after them two. I'll stay here till you get back."
The guard departed, having first carefully tied the dynamiters with Henry's clothesline. Mary Hill sat down beside Henry, the big gun balanced on her knee. Her cold, small fingers crept into his palm. She was little and dear, she might have been the mother that he missed or the daughter he had never had. The old man patted her wrist gently and a slow ache swelled within him, made up of loneliness and weariness. Then a new thought comforted him. She'd be there every day—in that tower, in his garden, the green eye-shade binding down her rebellious hair. He gave a tremendous sigh and his age-old war against the B. & A. perished in lusty middle age.
At this minute two-thirds of the village of Elsie surged into his garden.