Phil for one of those and left it to the man
nearest to the intruder to settle the account.

With a quick movement Phil threw his body over the table, catching
the little fellow smartly by the neck-cloth and shirt in a grip that
there was no gainsaying. By the sheer power of his right hand and arm,
he pulled the astonished Ginger--before his more astonished
partners--right across the table, planting him on his feet in front of
him.

The little man gasped for breath and struggled, but finding his
struggling merely meant more strangling, he commenced to feel at his
hip as if for a gun.

Phil struck him on the side of the head, sending him staggering
against the wall. As Ginger recovered, Phil held his spurs under the
man's nose and jingled them.

"I guess you know these?"

The fellow's narrow eyes opened wide. He let out a guttural sound and
sprang for the door. Phil shot after him. But the little one's speed
was accelerated by his fear. Phil's boot was all that reached him and
it did its work uncommonly well. A nicely planted kick, just when he
reached the door-step, sent Ginger in the air and seated him on the
plank sidewalk. He jumped up almost before he touched the boards and
tore down the road as if the devil himself were behind him.

Brenchfield, who had been a silent spectator of what had taken place,
came into the main room of the restaurant, where a crowd of low whites
and curious Chinese had gathered.

"Look here, young man!--you don't want to be doing much of that in
this town or you'll find yourself locked up."

Phil shook his spurs in the Mayor's face.

"And _you_ don't want to be doing much of _this_, or you'll find
yourself my next cell neighbour."

The Mayor had no idea how far his opponent was prepared to go, and
evidently afraid to risk a scene, he turned his back on Phil with an
oath.

"First time I catch that damned, sneaking little rat I saw you with
I'll thrash him within an inch of his miserable little life."

"You just try it on,--and, God help you,--that's all," retorted Phil.

CHAPTER X

Jim's Grand Toot

As Phil knocked the dust from his clothes and wiped the perspiration
from his face, it suddenly struck him that Jim Langford must have been
waiting fully half an hour for him at the Kenora.

He hurried through Chinatown and down toward the hotel. When he
got there, he found Jim in lazy conversation with some passing
acquaintance, whom he immediately left.

"Did yo