e.

Tomorrow some of these same men, meeting in the roadway, would perhaps
eye each other with suspicion. Riding on, after greetings, they would go
with craned necks, neither trusting the other to depart unwatched, but
today the rude sanctuary of hospitality to the stranger rested over them
and the timbers that went up were raised by the hands of friends and
enemies alike.

But toward sunset the newcomer chanced upon a fight that the simple code
had not safeguarded and that had gained headway before his interference.

Down by the creek-bed, with no audience, he found two boys rolling in a
smother of dust and, until he remembered that the hill code of "fist and
skull" bars neither shod-toe nor bared tooth, he was shocked at the
unmitigated savagery of the combat.

The strenuous pair rolled in a mad embrace, and as he approached, one of
the boys--whose back alone he could see--came to the top of the writhing
heap. While this one gouged, left handed, at eyes which the other
attempted to cover, his right hand whipped out a jack-knife which he
sought to open with his teeth. Out of the commotion came an animal-like
incoherence of snarls and panting profanity, and Victor McCalloway
caught the top boy by his shoulder and dragged him forcibly away from
what threatened to be maiming or worse.

So pried from his victim, on the verge of victory, the boy with a bloody
and unrecognized face stood for an instant heaving of breast and
infuriated, then wrenching himself free from the detaining hand, he gave
a leap as sudden as that of a frightened buck and disappeared behind the
screen of the laurel.

The other figure, with an eye blackened and bleeding from the raw
scratches of finger-nails about the lids, came more slowly to his feet,
his breath rasping with passion and exhaustion. He stood there before
his would-be rescuer--and McCalloway recognized Boone Wellver.

"I'd hev licked him--so his own mammy wouldn't 'a' knowed him ef ye
hadn't 'a' bust in on me," he panted. "I'd done had him down oncet afore
an' I war jest erbout ter turn him under ergin."

A light of suppressed drollery glinted into the eyes of the man whose
ruddy face remained otherwise unsmiling.

"It looked to me as though you were in a situation where nothing could
save you but reinforcements--or surrender," he commented, and the
heaving body of the rescued boy grew rigid while his begrimed face
flamed with chagrin.

"Surrender--knock under--ter _him_!" H