“As he begun to tell me about it, we walked on, over toward the barracks. He was ravin’. There’s nobody much at the barracks now, because nearly all the fellers have gone home for the holidays. And we stood there, talkin’ it over, Kadir Dhin sayin’ he wished Merriwell would come along, on his way to his room in the barracks; that he wanted to meet him there, and settle with him.
“And just then we saw him comin’ from Gunn’s. Kadir Dhin put his hand in his coat pocket, and I thought he was divin’ for a knife.
“‘None o’ that,’ I says to him; ‘there’s two of us’; and, if he had a knife, he didn’t draw it. But he turned a funny yellow kind o’ white, and I knew that something was coming. ‘Go at him fair,’ I says, ‘and I’ll back you.’”
“Right out in public, too!” commented Colonel Carson; “shows how many different kinds of idiot y’ aire, Bully!”
“It seemed quiet enough; nobody on the parade ground, and didn’t seem to be anybody in the barracks. Anyhow, then was the time, if it was to be done; and you’re to recklect that it wasn’t me, but the Hindu, that planned it.
“‘I want to speak with you,’ said Kadir Dhin, when Merriwell came up; ‘I’m goin’ to settle with you right now!’ He didn’t strike out at him, but slid his hand along, as if he was tryin’ to get Merriwell by the throat. At that, Merriwell hit him and knocked him back against the barracks wall. And then I came in.”
He stopped and drew in his breath heavily.
“When you fight your own battles, Bully, I don’t object; but when you fight those of other people, and no coin coming in for it——”
“That’s all right, dad; but I’d owed Merriwell a licking a long time.”
“And you took that chance to pay it?”