There was dead silence in the crowd and none dared go to his assistance.  But presently the bully sat up and passed his hand over his eyes.  With a roar of pain and rage he sprang to his feet and looked around.

The nearest person to him was the leader of the broncho boys, who stood on the edge of the crowd, alert and smiling.  Ted knew that it meant fight now.

He was convinced that Ben was in the right, but right or wrong, Ben had started it, and it was now up to the broncho boys to see that their side did not get the worst of it.

Realizing that Ted was an enemy, Shan Rhue made a rush at him.  Those beside Ted turned and ran.  But Ted did not move.  He only stood a little tenser.

It took but a moment for the bully to cross the distance that lay between him and Ted.  His rush was like that of a bull, and as irresistible.  But Ted did not propose to take the brunt of it.  He knew several tricks better than that.

As Rhue was about to launch himself upon Ted, the latter stepped lightly aside.  So sure was Rhue of landing on Ted and bearing him to the ground that he had leaped into the air, and, finding nothing to stop his progress, was overbalanced.  A sweep of Ted’s foot completed it, for the legs of the bully were swept from under him, and he went to the sod on his face with a crash that seemed to shake the earth.

Like an eagle upon its prey, Ted was on the back of the bully.  The crowd shouted like mad, eager to go to the rescue of their champion.  But Ted heard the voice of the foreman of Running Water high above the din.

“It’s the boy’s fight, an’ any man that breaks through the line will get a ball from my forty-four plumb through him.  Stand back, you cattle!”

“Let ’em go, fellers.  Shan will kill him in a minute,” shouted one of the gamblers.

Shan Rhue had been badly shaken up by the jolt that had been his when he struck the ground.  For several moments he did not stir, and Ted thought he had been knocked out.

Many of the men in the crowd knew things about Shan Rhue which Ted did not.

Rhue was considered the strongest man in the Southwest at that time.  He was barely forty years old, in the prime of his life, and a man who had never dissipated.  But he was a thoroughly bad man for all that, and the number of men whom he had killed had been forgotten.

His feats of strength were the talk of barrooms and bunk houses.  He had been seen many times to break horseshoes with his hands, and as for bending a bar of iron by striking the muscles of his forearm with it, that was one of his ordinary tricks.

But the thing of which he was proudest was his ability to buck a man off his back.  In this feat he barred none, no matter how heavy.  He would get on his hands and knees, place a surcingle around his body under his arms for his rider to hold on by, and then proceed to buck.

It would seem impossible for a man to stick to him under such circumstances, and no one had been found yet who could do so.