pressure she
felt that her arm was a pipe-stem about to break.

"That's called the 'come along.'--An' here's the strong arm. A boy
can down a man with it. An' if you ever get into a scrap an' the other
fellow gets your nose between his teeth--you don't want to lose your
nose, do you? Well, this is what you do, quick as a flash."

Involuntarily she closed her eyes as Billy's thumb-ends pressed into
them. She could feel the fore-running ache of a dull and terrible hurt.

"If he don't let go, you just press real hard, an' out pop his eyes, an'
he's blind as a bat for the rest of his life. Oh, he'll let go all right
all right."

He released her and lay back laughing.

"How d'ye feel?" he asked. "Those ain't boxin' tricks, but they're all
in the game of a roughhouse."

"I feel like revenge," she said, trying to apply the "come along" to his
arm.

When she exerted the pressure she cried out with pain, for she had
succeeded only in hurting herself. Billy grinned at her futility. She
dug her thumbs into his neck in imitation of the Japanese death touch,
then gazed ruefully at the bent ends of her nails. She punched him
smartly on the point of the chin, and again cried out, this time to the
bruise of her knuckles.

"Well, this can't hurt me," she gritted through her teeth, as she
assailed his solar plexus with her doubled fists.

By this time he was in a roar of laughter. Under the sheaths of muscles
that were as armor, the fatal nerve center remained impervious.

"Go on, do it some more," he urged, when she had given up, breathing
heavily. "It feels fine, like you was ticklin' me with a feather."

"All right, Mister Man," she threatened balefully. "You can talk about
your grips and death touches and all the rest, but that's all man's
game. I know something that will beat them all, that will make a strong
man as helpless as a baby. Wait a minute till I get it. There. Shut your
eyes. Ready? I won't be a second."

He waited with closed eyes, and then, softly as rose petals fluttering
down, he felt her lips on his mouth.

"You win," he said in solemn ecstasy, and passed his arms around her.

CHAPTER XIV

In the morning Billy went down town to pay for Hazel and Hattie. It was
due to Saxon's impatient desire to see them, that he seemed to take a
remarkably long time about so simple a transaction. But she forgave him
when he arrived with the two horses hitched to the camping wagon.

"Had to borrow the harness,