Page:Cherokee Trails (1928).pdf/47

 heels if it crowded him and give jit the best he had, but only succeeding in giving the other fellow greater confidence to push his trick.

"Any man wearin' one of them things meets trouble when he meets me," the stranger declared.

Wallace never had pulled a gun on a man in his life, but he had a half-made feeling that the time had come when the inviolability of person and the defense of dignity called for such a move. He looked around to see if the boss or any of the boys was rising to his support, an appealing, questioning, doubtful look in his simple eyes.

Joe Lobdell started up as if to come over and take a hand, but the boss restrained him.

"It's that damn fool badge," Coburn said. "I told him it'd git him in trouble. Let him hoe his own row out of it—maybe it'll learn him some sense."

Wallace was well enough acquainted with the habits of dogs to know that, if a man turned his back and acted as if he intended to run when confronted by a hesitating mean one, he'd have to hit it up pretty lively to save damage to his raiment and his hide, yet he didn't calculate with this man as he would have managed with a dog. While he turned his face toward the boss and the boys that moment, the rangy cuss jumped him. The next thing old Wallace knew he was, hopelessly overwhelmed by the sensitive gentleman's companions, the leader twisting a bony grip in his shirt collar, his other hand busy with the offending badge.

Wallace kicked and scrambled and clawed for his gun, but he was as helpless as a hogtied calf under the branding iron. Over at the card table Tom Simpson jumped