just as I had finished my plea.

"You have got the money promised you, have you?" repeated McGill. "Grab
him, boys!"

All this time I was wondering where Rowena could be. I recollected how
she had always seemed to be mortified by her slack-twisted family, and
I could see her as she meeched off across the prairie hack along the Old
Ridge Road, as if she belonged to another outfit; and yet, I knew how
much of a Fewkes she was, as she joined in the conversation when they
planned their great estates in the mythical state of Negosha, or in
Texas, or even in California. I grew hot with anger as I began to
realize what a humiliation this tarring and feathering would be to
her--and I kept wondering, as I have said, where she could be, even as I
felt the thrill a man experiences when he sees that he must fight: and
just as I felt this thrill, one of our men closed with the old fellow
from behind, and wrenching his bird's-claw hands behind his back, thrust
the wizened old bearded face forward for its coat of tar.

I clinched with our man, and getting a rolling hip-lock on him, I
whirled him over my head, as I had done with so many wrestling
opponents, and letting him go in mid-air, he went head over heels, and
struck ten feet away on the ground. Then I turned on McGill, and with
the flat of my hand, I slapped him over against the shanty, with his
ears ringing. They were coming at me in an undecided way: for my onset
had been both sudden and unexpected; when I saw Rowena running from the
rear with a shotgun in her hand, which she had picked up as it leaned
against a wagon wheel where one of our crowd had left it.

"Stand back!" she screamed. "Stand back, or I'll blow somebody's head
off!"

I heard a chuckling laugh from a man sitting in one of the wagons, and a
word or two from him that sounded like, "Good girl!" Our little mob fell
back, the man I had thrown limping, and Dick McGill rubbing the side of
his head. The dawn was now broadening in the east, and it was getting
almost light enough so that faces might be recognized; and one or two of
the crowd began to retreat toward the wagons.

"I'll see to it," said I, "that these people will leave this land, and
give up their settlement on it."

"No we won't," said Rowena. "We'll stay here if we're killed."

"Now, Rowena," said her father, "don't be so sot. We'll leave right off.
Boys, hitch up the horse. We'll leave, gentlemen. I was gittin' tired of
this country anyway. I