All in an instant they saw Major Covington and Judge Priest struggling awkwardly with the thief over the intervening seatback, pawing at him, trying to wrest his hot weapon away from him; saw Mrs. McLaurin's head roll back inertly; saw the other hold-up man pivot about to come to his bleaguered partner's aid; and saw, filling the doorway behind this second ruffian, the long shape of old man Press Harper, as he threw himself across the joined platforms upon their rear, noiseless as a snake and deadly as one, his lean old face set in a square shape of rage, his hot red hair erect on his head like a Shawnee's scalplock, his gaunt, long arms upraised and arched over and his big hands spread like grapples. And in that same second the whole aisle seemed filled with gray-coated, gray-haired old men, falling over each other and impeding each other's movements in their scrambling forward surge to take a hand in the fight. To the end of their born days those two watching darkies had a story to tell that never lost its savor for teller or for audience--a story of how a lank, masked thief was taken by surprise from behind; was choked, crushed, beaten into instant helplessness before he had a chance to aim and fire; then was plucked backward, lifted high in the arms of a man twice his age and flung sidelong, his limbs flying like a whirligig as he rolled twenty feet down the steep slope to the foot of the fill. But this much was only the start of what Uncle Zach and Judge Priest's Jeff had to tell afterward. For now, then, realizing that an attack was being made on his rear, the stockier thief broke Judge Priest's fumbling grip upon his gun-hand and half swung himself about to shoot the unseen foe, whoever it might be; but, as he jammed its muzzle into the stomach of the newcomer and pressed the trigger, the left hand of old Harper closed down fast upon the lock of the revolver, so that the hammer, coming down, only pinched viciously into his horny thumb. Breast to breast they wrestled in that narrow space at the head of the aisle for possession of the weapon. The handkerchief mask had fallen away, showing brutal jaws covered with a red stubble, and loose lips snarled away from the short stained teeth. The beleaguered robber, young, stocky and stout, cursed and mouthed blasphemies; but the old man was silent except for his snorted breathing and his frame was distended and swollen with a terrible Berserker lust of battle. While Major Covington and Judge Priest and the foremost of the others got in one another's way and packed in a solid, heaving mass behind the pair, all shouting and all trying to help, but really not helping at all, the red ruffian, grunting with the fervor of the blow, drove his clenched fist into old Harper's face, ripping the skin on the high Indian cheekbone. The old man dealt no blows in return, but his right hand found a grip in the folds of flesh at the tramp's throat and the fingers closed down like iron clamps on his wind.