The little creature threw out his wings. Lem steadied it with careful deliberation, then leaped down from the boulder. The instant his feet struck the ground it seemed to shock his very blood into icy currents that congealed and left him befuddled and shivering.
As he stared into the revenuer's insolent face, the earth looked like a pinwheel.
Suddenly the film lifted from his brain and he was conscious for the first time that the revenuer had taken his rifle. The man's thick lips were moving. He was talking to him. Lem's poise came back. Fully aroused, his face went livid with rage. The revenuer perceived this and thrust the rifle muzzle closer.
"You don't doubt that I'll shoot, do you?" he inquired, with his eyes fixed savagely upon Lem.
"Naw, houn'-dog," returned the boy in low, quavering tones. "Yo'd kill a female baby."
"Don't you know when I first saw you on that rock training that hawk to sit up, you kind of scared me?" He expelled a volume of tobacco juice. "You scared me some, Mr. Lutts. I thought you was fixing to ring a church bell on me."
He let loose of Lem's rifle and it fell behind him. He held his own, pistol-fashion, under his arm, with his finger in the guard, as he stepped nearer and shook a huge menacing fist in the boy's pallid face.
"You'll have a swell chance ringing anything on me again unless you've got a church bell in your pocket. You pulled a swell trick on me that night, didn't ye? You thought the bunch that galloped down to your dog-house would get me that night, didn't ye? Young man, I'm going to bust this gang of thieves up here, or I'll drink Hellsfork dry! And you--you--you're not only carrying on your daddy's business----"
A blinding, reckless fury that fired Lem with the strength and savagery of a tiger propelled his body through the air like a catapult. He landed on the revenuer's neck and with his naked hands he tried to kill him.
He learned speedily why Burton had not fired, for a second man who had been concealed behind the boulders, together with Jutt Orlick, sprang out and upon him. These two heavyweights soon overpowered and handcuffed the boy, while Orlick lay with gloating eyes, peering out at the scene.
Burton rolled Lem over on his back, and left him to exhaust the maledictions he was heaping upon their heads.