ff. Too late! When Pan sprang
off the last desk to the platform Dick had turned--with the teacher's
long paper knife in his hand and baleful hate in his prominent eyes.

Later, when the children outside dared to peep into the schoolroom they
neither saw nor heard anything of the fighters. But fearing they were
just hiding behind the benches, ready for a renewed fusillade, not one
of the pupils dared go in. The teacher had hurried down the road to
meet the men some of the boys had fetched.

And these men were Jim Blake and Bill Smith who had been riding home
from the range. When they entered the schoolroom with the teacher
fearfully following, and only Lucy of all the scholars daring to come
too, they found the fight was over.

Dick lay unconscious on the floor with a bloody forehead. Pan sat
crouched on the platform, haggard and sullen, with face, shirt, hands
all bloody.

"Ah-uh! Reckon you've been fightin' like a cowboy for shore this
time," said Pan's father in his matter of fact way. "Stand up. Let's
look at you.... Jim, take a look at that lad on the floor."

While Pan painfully endeavored to get up, Blake knelt beside Dick.

"Bill, this heah rooster has had a wallop," said Blake.

"You little cowpunchin' ruffian," exploded Smith angrily, reaching a
large arm for Pan. "Now then.... What the hell? ... Boy, you've been
_stabbed_!"

"Yes--Dad--he stuck me--with teacher's knife," replied Pan faintly. He
tottered on his feet, and his right hand was pressed tight to his left
shoulder, high up, where the broken haft of the paper knife showed
between his red-stained fingers.

Bill Smith's anger vanished in alarm, and something stern and grim took
its place. Just then Lucy broke away from the teacher and confronted
him.

"Oh--please don't punish him, Mr. Smith," she burst out poignantly.
"It was all my fault. I--I stuck up my nose at Dick. He said things
that--that weren't nice.... I slapped him. Then he grabbed me, kissed
me.... I ran to Pan--and--and told him.... Oh, that made Pan fight."

Smith looked gravely down into the white little face with the distended
violet eyes, slowly losing their passion. He seemed to be struck with
something that he had never seen before.

"Wal, Lucy, I'll not punish Pan," he said, slowly. "I think more of
him for fightin' for you."

CHAPTER FOUR

They did not meet again during the winter. It was a hard winter. Pan
left school and stayed close