"Dat feller," he said, "chust vent out off my blace. He's got a young
cannon strapped to his vish-bone. I don't know if he's chust a rube, or
if maybe he's bad. Anyway, he's a gun-toter."
The two patrolmen only nodded, and sauntered on. They did not hurry,
but neither did Samson. Pausing to gaze into a window filled with
Italian sweetmeats, he felt a hand on his shoulder, and turned to find
himself looking into two pairs of accusing eyes.
"What's your game?" shortly demanded one of the officers.
"What's ther matter?" countered Samson, as tartly as he had been
questioned.
"Don't you know better than to tote a gun around this town?"
"I reckon thet's my business, hain't hit?"
The boy stepped back, and shook the offending hand from his shoulder.
His gorge was rising, but he controlled it, and turned on his heel,
with the manner of one saying the final word.
"I reckon ye're a-barkin' up ther wrong tree."
"Not by a damned sight, we ain't!" One of the patrolmen seized and
pinioned his arms, while the second threateningly lifted his club.
"Don't try to start anything, young feller," he warned. The street was
awake now and the ever-curious crowd began to gather. The big officer
at Samson's back held his arms locked and gave curt directions to his
partner. "Go through him, Quinn."
Samson recognized that he was in the hands of the law, and a different
sort of law from that which he had known on Misery. He made no effort
to struggle, but looked very straight and unblinkingly into the eyes of
the club-wielder.
"Don't ye hit me with thet thing," he said, quietly. "I warns ye."
The officer laughed as he ran his left hand over Samson's hips and
chest, and brought out the offending weapon.
"I guess that's about all. We'll let you explain the rest of it to the
judge. It's a trick on the Island for yours."
The Island meant nothing to Samson South, but the derisive laughter of
the crowd, and the roughness with which the two bluecoats swung him
around, and ordered him to march, set on edge every defiant nerve.
Still, he gazed directly into the faces of his captors, and inquired
with a cruelly forced calm: "Does ye 'low ter take me ter the jail-house?"
"Can that rube stuff. Get along, get along!" And the officers started
him on his journey with a shove that sent him lurching and stumbling
forward. Then, the curb of control slipped. The prisoner wheeled, his
face distorted with passion, and lashed out with his fist to the face
of the biggest patrolman. It was a foolish and hopeless attack, as the
boy realized, but in his code it was necessary. One must resent
gratuitous insult whatever the odds, and he fought with such
concentrated fury and swiftness, after his rude hill method of "fist
and skull," driving in terrific blows with hands and head, that the
crowd breathed deep with the delicious excitement of the combat--and
regretted its brevity.