“You’ve got a lickin’ comin’,” says he, “and I’m a-goin’ to deliver the goods. I’ve warned you. I won’t be called a tramp or a jail-bird and I’ll soak any feller that called them to me.” “You dassent start any fight here,” says Banty, and he believed it, too. “Tramp!” he says as a sort of dare. “I’m goin’ to give both of you a lickin’,” says Catty. “Either one at a time or both of you together. I calc’late you’re the kind that ’ll want to fight two to one.” “We won’t fight here—not on Main Street.” “You bet you _will_,” says Catty. “Don’t you dast,” says Skoodles. “We’ll have you arrested.” Catty didn’t wait for anything more. He took a step ahead and he slapped Banty with one hand and Skoodles with the other. “Now fight,” says he, and they fought. In a second the whole street looked like it was full of fists and feet and kids mauling each other. I expected Catty would get a thundering walloping—two to one—but I didn’t mix in. It wasn’t because I didn’t want to, or because I was afraid to, and I made up my mind that if they did thrash Catty I’d catch each of them alone and lamm him good. But Catty wanted to fight his own fight, so I stood back and watched. Folks began to come from all directions to see the rumpus. Banty was coming at Catty from one side and Skoodles from the other, and it looked like he had bit off more than he could chaw. If he went for one the other hit him a lick, and if he went for the other the first one got in a punch. But Catty sort of worked around till he got his back to a store window, and then it wasn’t so bad. He acted like he was just fighting to keep them off, and I thought he knew he couldn’t do any more than that; but all of a sudden he jumped at Skoodles and quicker than a cat he hit him twice, once on the nose and once on the stummick, and Skoodles sat down to think it over. Then Catty went for Banty in earnest, and in about two minutes Banty was running up the street, hollering, with his lips swollen and one eye that wouldn’t take a prize in a beauty show for a week. Catty looked after Banty and he looked down at Skoodles, and then he grinned. “Guess they won’t call names for a day or so,” he says, and just then Mrs. Gage came through the crowd that had gathered. She was so mad she was white. “That’s what we get for having tramps in this town. I said right along he was a young tough. He’ll be killing somebody or something. It hain’t civilized,” says she. “Where’s the constable or the town marshal?” she says. “I guess he’ll go to jail for this.” “I’ll go to jail if I have to,” says Catty, “but nobody ’ll call me a tramp or a jail-bird. I’m respectable, ma’am, and I’m entitled to be treated respectable.” “You’ll be treated respectable,” says she. “I’m going to——”