Читать книгу The Long Rifle - Stewart Edward White - Страница 8

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From across the earth street a large mongrel launched itself like a thunderbolt straight for the woolly dog. The latter, bowled over by the suddenness and weight of the onslaught, shrieked aloud in terror, writhing and snapping in the grip of its more powerful antagonist. The air was vociferous with growls, yelps and snarls.

“Dog fight! Dog fight!” yelled those nearest. The idlers surged forward joyously, forming a compact eager group around the center of disturbance, those on the outside crowding and shoving for a better view. The little girl, jostled unceremoniously aside, beat and pulled at the braced legs, frantic but quite unnoticed. She was beside herself, all her pretty poise shattered by the urgency of the crisis. The world had become a world of inhuman and indifferent backs. Casting about her distractedly she ran in appeal to the one face turned in her direction.

“He’ll be killed!” she cried. “It’s that old Tiger! He’s always tried to kill him! Oh! Oh!”

The young man contemplated her gravely for a moment; then, with an air of having come to a deliberate decision, began to shove his way to the center of the close-packed ring. So sudden and so determined was his movement that he met no serious opposition. Some of those he thrust aside flared angrily, and would have laid hands upon him, but so quickly had he moved that he was beyond their reach. Before anybody had grasped clearly what he was about he had snatched the woolly dog aloft, and had delivered a very convincing kick into the short ribs of its assailant.

“You Tiger! Down!” he further admonished that canine. His low soft voice snapped like a whip. In its tone was that entire expectation of obedience which alone penetrates effectively to a dog’s consciousness. Tiger hesitated, licked his lips: but he obeyed.

At once the air was rent by cries of angry expostulation.

“Hey you! What you think you’re doin’!” “Who the hell you think you are?”

Men, red-faced, crowded belligerently forward. Fists were clenched; hands were raised. Had the young man stirred by a palm’s breadth it is probable the mob would have fallen upon him bodily. He did not move. Holding the cowed and whimpering woolly dog in his arms, he waited. His blue eyes were calm, and a little remote, as though, pending the moment, he had withdrawn to secret, inner, and distant preoccupations of his own.

“Folks,” said he pleasantly at last. He did not raise his voice: and instinctively the mob hushed to quiet that it might hear, “I like a good dawg fight same as anybody. But this here ain’t no dawg fight: it’s a killin’. Besides, this here thing ain’t rightly a dog, according to my raisin’: and besides that it belongs to the lady yander.”

He tossed his head ever so slightly from the abject woolly dog toward the gulping small girl. Several responded, with a faint laugh, to the grave and sardonic gleam in his eye. But one burly and red-faced man was unreconciled and belligerent.

“By God!” cried this one. “Who are you to come pushin’ yourself in where you ain’t wanted? For a ha’penny I’d——”

The young man turned his head deliberately.

“Dawg fights most gen’lly turns into man fights,” he remarked. “Don’t seem no sense to it; but that’s the way it is. I ain’t aimin’ for no trouble: I’m just a-travelin’ through.”

“Afraid be ye!” sneered the red-faced man. “Well, I’ll——”

“No, I’m not afeard,” interrupted the stranger placidly. “I’ll fight ye, if so be ye’re set upon it. But yere ain’t no time nor place. For one thing I’m aimin’ to take this young-un and her—” he glanced down, a gleam of humor crossing the bleak gravity of his face—“and her dawg,” he drawled, “back home where she ought to be.”

“Runnin’ away,” sneered the red-faced man.

“I ain’t leavin’,” stated the young man. He surveyed slowly one by one the faces of the crowd. “I reckon that’s all,” said he. “I’ll be back yere afore sundown, and then you can suit yoreself.” He turned away with a decision that parted the ring before him, picked up his rifle and leather portmanteau which he slung again across his shoulder.

“Come on, sister,” said he. She raised her tear-stained face to his confidingly and took his hand. They moved away: the woolly dog snuggled in the hollow of his left arm, he shortening his long woodsman strides, she skipping valiantly to keep pace.