ds out'n
him ef he stands thar a great while."

"Ye'll git jedgment ag'in me, ye Caroliny splinter, will ye?" yelled Mr.
Gibson, with an oath. "I'll pay Bill Wilder the skins when I git ready,
and all the pinhook lawyers in Washington County won't budge me a mite."

"You'll pay Bill Wilder or go to jail, by the eternal," cried the young
man, quite as angrily, whereupon I looked upon him with a mixture of
admiration and commiseration, with a gulping certainty in my throat that
I was about to see murder done. He was a strange young man, with the
rare marked look that would compel even a poor memory to pick him out
again. For example, he was very tall and very slim, with red hair blown
every which way over a high and towering forehead that seemed as long
as the face under it. The face, too, was long, and all freckled by the
weather. The blue eyes held me in wonder, and these blazed with such
prodigious wrath that, if a look could have killed, Hump Gibson would
have been stricken on the spot. Mr. Gibson was, however, very much
alive.

"Skin out o' here afore I kill ye," he shouted, and he charged at the
slim young man like a buffalo, while the crowd held its breath. I, who
had looked upon cruel sights in my day, was turning away with a kind
of sickening when I saw the slim young man dodge the rush. He did more.
With two strides of his long legs he reached the fence, ripped off the
topmost rail, and his huge antagonist, having changed his direction and
coming at him with a bellow, was met with the point of a scantling in
the pit of his stomach, and Mr. Gibson fell heavily to the ground. It
had all happened in a twinkling, and there was a moment's lull while the
minds of the onlookers needed readjustment, and then they gave vent to
ecstasies of delight.

"Great Goliah!" cried the landlord, breathlessly, "he shet him up jest
like a jack-knife."

Awe-struck, I looked at the tall young man, and he was the very essence
of wrath. Unmindful of the plaudits, he stood brandishing the fence-rail
over the great, writhing figure on the ground. And he was slobbering. I
recall that this fact gave a twinge to something in my memory.

"Come on, Hump Gibson," he cried, "come on!"--at which the crowd went
wild with pure joy. Witticisms flew.

"Thought ye was goin' to eat 'im up, Hump?" said a friend.

"Ye ain't hed yer meal yet, Hump," reminded another.

Mr. Hump Gibson arose slowly out of the dust, yet he did not stand
straight.