“Take Pug if you want someone for your credit’s sake,” he said. “But I’m hanged if you’ll touch Art Scannell.”
Ormond had Roddy Duncan upright and half-sheltered by his arm. He paused one instant before buffetting out a track through the locked and reeking bodies.
“Randal—don’t be a fool,” he cried. “Murray has the law———.”
Then the crowd surged in, and Randal understood through the whirl of blood-hot haste that Murray was struggling with swinging handcuffs. He heard the clink as they brushed Art’s arm. He struck straight from the shoulder, and Murray dropped without remark. Then Randal beat a way out to the dark, and the far pure stars, and silence.
The unholy excitement that calls up the beast in man was abroad in the air, and Lou rode on the blast of it; gay, quick-fisted, and undistressed. The Packer, who nursed a twisted arm for a full three weeks, averred that it was Lou who brought peace at the dawning when he turned the mob into Phelan’s bar for another round of nips, and helped Murray and two more to select the ringleaders where they lay in an unmoving slumber.
Randal came to Murray in the red morning. His lip was swelled, and he was not otherwise good to look on.
“It was I who floored you last night,” he
