Page:Hugh Pendexter--The young timber-cruisers.djvu/136

 and the old sweet smile illumined his face. “Forgive me, Stanley. I was mad clear through at you. But it’s all gone now. It’s all gone because we are about to have a bully good fight and I shall have a chance to show you I am no coward. Keep back in the corner. This is my row and I’ll go through with it alone.”

“You know that is impossible,” calmly said Stanley, clasping the other’s hand. His face was pale and he believed he was about to face a desperate situation, but there was no tremor in his hands, no unsteadiness in his voice. “I told you back at the mills that your troubles were mine, just as you made my troubles yours.”

“Well, they’ll have a fine time gitting in here,” decided Bub, half grinning. “What a ninny I was to try to git outside where Nick would have run me down in five minutes.”

Rap! rap! rap! and the door shook.

“I’m going to shoot,” cried Bub, throwing forward the rifle.

“Charlie,” informed a guttural voice.

“Be careful, ye young tyke,” bellowed Abner. “Ye shoot me and I’ll skin ye alive.”

With a hysterical laugh Bub dropped the