s hands on you--you're gone. You know how they fight
rough-and-tumble."

Hale nodded--he knew all that himself, and when he looked at Dave's
sturdy neck, and gigantic shoulders, he knew further that if the
mountaineer got him in his grasp he would have to gasp "enough" in a
hurry, or be saved by Budd from being throttled to death.

"Are you ready?" Again Hale nodded.

"Go ahead, Dave," growled the sergeant, for the job was not to his
liking. Dave did not plunge toward Hale, as the three others expected.
On the contrary, he assumed the conventional attitude of the boxer
and advanced warily, using his head as a diagnostician for Hale's
points--and Hale remembered suddenly that Dave had been away at school
for a year. Dave knew something of the game and the Hon. Sam straightway
was anxious, when the mountaineer ducked and swung his left Budd's heart
thumped and he almost shrank himself from the terrific sweep of the big
fist.

"God!" he muttered, for had the fist caught Hale's head it must, it
seemed, have crushed it like an egg-shell. Hale coolly withdrew his head
not more than an inch, it seemed to Budd's practised eye, and jabbed
his right with a lightning uppercut into Dave's jaw, that made the
mountaineer reel backward with a grunt of rage and pain, and when he
followed it up with a swing of his left on Dave's right eye and another
terrific jolt with his right on the left jaw, and Budd saw the crazy
rage in the mountaineer's face, he felt easy. In that rage Dave forgot
his science as the Hon. Sam expected, and with a bellow he started at
Hale like a cave-dweller to bite, tear, and throttle, but the lithe
figure before him swayed this way and that like a shadow, and with every
side-step a fist crushed on the mountaineer's nose, chin or jaw, until,
blinded with blood and fury, Dave staggered aside toward the sergeant
with the cry of a madman:

"Gimme my gun! I'll kill him! Gimme my gun!" And when the sergeant
sprang forward and caught the mountaineer, he dropped weeping with rage
and shame to the ground.

"You two just go back to town," said the sergeant. "I'll take keer of
him. Quick!" and he shook his head as Hale advanced. "He ain't goin' to
shake hands with you."

The two turned back across the bridge and Hale went on to Budd's office
to do what he was setting out to do when young Dave came. There he had
the lawyer make out a deed in which the cabin in Lonesome Cove and
the acres about it were conveyed in f