I can feel it yet, the fierce pain and the horrible fear that overtook me when he jabbed at my eye-ball. I don’t know how I broke his hold. I only recollect that, half-blinded, hot searing pangs shooting along my optic nerve, I found myself free of him. And as I backed away from his outstretched paws my hand, sweeping along the billiard table, met and closed upon a hard, round object. With all the strength that was in me I flung it straight at his head. He went to the floor with a neat, circular depression in his forehead, just over the left eye. There was a hush in the saloon. One of the cattlemen stooped over him. “_Sangre de Cristo!_” he laughed. “A billiard ball sure beats a six-shooter for quick action. I’ll bet he was dead when he hit the floor.” CHAPTER V—THE RELATIVE MERITS OF THE FRYING-PAN AND THE FIRE They crowded close, a little ring of curious faces, about me and the dead man on the floor, and as a babel of talk uprose a tall, lean man pushed his way into the circle, Captain Speer of the _Moon_ at his heels. “I guess I’ll have to take you in just for luck,” the stranger said to me. “I’m town marshal. This killin’ business has got t’ stop.” He took me by the arm, and as he did so the cowpuncher who had looked down at Tupper stepped in between us, breaking the marshal’s hold. “Not this time, Bax,” he said softly. “Play fair or keep out uh the game. Yuh stay mighty close in your hole when a gun-fighter hits the town, and I’ll be damned if you build up your reputation by arrestin’ a kid. This red-muzzler came in huntin’ trouble, and he found it. It was on the square, and yuh ain’t goin’ to put nobody in your stinkin’ calaboose—not to-night. You and me don’t hitch on _that_ proposition.” For a second or two it seemed as if there might be another clash. Behind the two a space cleared at the first words, and I noticed more than one cowpuncher hitch his gun-belt forward. For myself, I was too dazed to realize the exact turn of affairs, and I cared less. Tupper, at least, would trouble me no more, and for that I was truly glad. But there was no mix-up, nor even a harsh word. The marshal weakened. If he had intended to take me he changed his mind after a brief glance at the faces of the men who were watching him with silent intentness. “If that’s the way yuh feel about it, all right,” he said—with an indifference that his flushed face belied. He turned on his heel and walked out, Captain Speer following. “Yuh bet it’s all right,” the cowpuncher flung after him derisively. Then to me: “Throw a jolt uh Bourbon into yuh, kid, and you’ll feel better. Yuh made a good fight. But let me tell yuh somethin’. Go heeled. And when one uh these rough-necked fist-fighters jumps yuh, ventilate him. Show your claws a time or two, and these would-be bad actors’ll leave yuh strictly alone. Say, Mr. Bar-slave let’s have one _pronto_.”