The deputy sheriff was shaken but not hurt, for young O’Dell had spared his face. He lowered his head and charged like a ram. Ben gave ground before that unsportsmanlike onset; and, alas for Mr. Brown’s nose and upper lip, he gave more than ground.
“Ye’d best quit right now,” wailed Mel Lunt. “Yer gittin’ all messed up an’ ye ain’t in yer rights an’ folks’ll maybe think as I was mixed up in it too.”
Brown made a fourth attack and tried to obtain a wrestler’s hold low down on the overgrown youth; but Ben, cool as a butter firkin in a cellar, hooked him off. Brown charged yet again, and then once more, and then sat down on the floor.
They bathed his face and held cold water for him to drink. Ben fetched sticking plaster from the house, covertly, and applied strips of it here and there to his late antagonist’s damaged face.
“Never see such a hammerin’ since Alec Todd fit Mike Kane up to Kane’s Lake twenty year ago,” said Mel Lunt, extracting crushed cigars from his superior’s vest pockets. “But them two fit with feet an’ everything, an’ Ben here didn’t use nothin’ but his hands. I reckon they larn ye more’n joggofy where ye’ve been to school. Dang me if even his watch ain’t stopped!”
The deputy sheriff and the constable drove away fifteen minutes later, the deputy sheriff sagging heavily against his companion’s shoulder.
“Now they’ll maybe let us get along with the haying,” remarked McAllister.
“And perhaps he will get along with his own job of hunting for the man who shot Balenger, instead of wasting his time talking about that pirogue,” said Ben. “How would the pirogue help him? What did he mean by speaking of it as evidence?”
“Old Tim Hood’s put that crazy notion into his head, where there’s plenty of room for crazy notions,” replied the uncle. “Old Tim’s a trouble hunter and always was—a master hand at hunting trouble for other people. And he don’t like the O’Dells and never did. Yer gran’pa gave him a caning once, a regular dusting, for starving an old horse to death.”
“Do you think I’ll have to go to jail for fighting Brown?” asked Ben with ill-concealed anxiety. “It would be a blow to mother—but I don’t see what else I could do but fight him, after the things he said.”