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.
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