“You have got the money promised you, have you?” repeated McGill.  “Grab him, boys!”

All this time I was wondering where Rowena could be.  I recollected how she had always seemed to be mortified by her slack-twisted family, and I could see her as she meeched off across the prairie hack along the Old Ridge Road, as if she belonged to another outfit; and yet, I knew how much of a Fewkes she was, as she joined in the conversation when they planned their great estates in the mythical state of Negosha, or in Texas, or even in California.  I grew hot with anger as I began to realize what a humiliation this tarring and feathering would be to her—­and I kept wondering, as I have said, where she could be, even as I felt the thrill a man experiences when he sees that he must fight:  and just as I felt this thrill, one of our men closed with the old fellow from behind, and wrenching his bird’s-claw hands behind his back, thrust the wizened old bearded face forward for its coat of tar.

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