Of course his animosity switched to the newcomer; but as he essayed a grapple the driving fist caught him quite neatly on the northeast corner of his jaw. He sat down, the goggle stare in his eyes suggesting that he contemplated a trip to dreamland.
The little woman now darted forward, crying in a voice whose gladsomeness swam in tears: "Bulldog Carney! You always man—you beaut!" She would have twined her arms about Bulldog, but the placid gray eyes, so full of quiet aloofness, checked her.
But the man's voice was soft and gentle as he said: "The same Bulldog, Molly, girl. Glad I happened along."
He turned to the quarrelsome one who had staggered to his feet: "You ride away before I get cross; you smell like the corpse of a dead booze-fighter!"
The man addressed looked into the gray eyes switched on his own for inspection; then he turned, mounted the black, and throwing over his shoulder, "I'll get you for this, Mister Butter-in!" rode away.
The other party to the rough-and-tumble, winded, had erected his five feet of length, and with a palm pressed against his chest was emiting between wheezy coughs picturesque words of ecomium upon Bulldog, not without derogatory reflections upon the man who had ridden away.
In the midst of this vocal cocktail he broke off suddenly to exclaim in astonishment:
"Holy Gawd!"
Then he scuttled past Carney, slipped a finger through the ring of the buckskin's snaffle and peered into the horse's face as if he had found a long-lost friend.
Perhaps the buckskin remembered him too, for he pressed a velvet, mouse-colored muzzle against the lad's cheek and whispered something.