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. It's so tarnal cold in the winter. The trees is in constant varder in Texas, an' that's where we'll go." By this time the mob had retreated to their wagons, their courage giving way before the light of day, rather than our resistance; though I could see that the settlers had no desire to get into a row with one of their neighbors: so shouting warnings to the Fewkeses to get out of the country while they could, they drove off, leaving me with the claim-jumpers. I turned and saw poor Rowena throw herself on the ground and burst into a most frightful fit of hysterical weeping. She would not allow her father or her brothers to touch her, and when her mother tried to comfort her, she said "Go away, ma. Don't touch me!" Finally I went to her, and she caught my hand in hers and pressed it, and after I had got her to her feet--the poor ragged waif, as limpsey as a rag, and wearing the patched remnants of the calico dress I had bought for her on the way into Iowa the spring before--she broke down and cried on my shoulder. She sobbed out that I was the only man she had ever known. She wished to God she were a man like me. The only way I could stop her was to tell her that her face ought to be washed; when I said that to her, she stopped her sitheing and soon began making herself pretty: and she was quite gay on the road to my place, where I took them because I couldn't think of anything else to do with them, though I knew that the whole family, not counting Rowena, couldn't or wouldn't do enough work to pay the board of their horse. 3