sneeringly defiant. Rage, red-hot, had surged over Stone and left him cold and murderous. The blow had been cowardly. He could not have warded it off, held as he was. But it had been administered in front of a hundred men and twenty women, his Americanism had been insulted, and Padilla had told him to run.
"You'll leave the girl out of it, you hound," he said, quietly, for the crowd, pressing forward, quieted suddenly, seemed to hang on his words. "You got knocked down once for insulting her. Now, by God, I'm going to thrash you on my own account!"
A shout went up and now men were coming out from the gambling rooms. Castro was not in evidence. A giant of a man, whom Stone had set down as an oilman, dressed in tweeds and corduroys, with his trousers tucked into high-laced boots, a wisp of a blonde girl clinging to his arm, pressed forward.
"Good for you," he said. "I've got enough of my own crowd here to see fair play. Go ahead and lick the damned Greaser! If Castro butts in we'll dean him up. I'll referee the bout, if you like, or second you, though I don't know so much about that end of it. Jim, oh, Jim!" Another big man, who seemed the twin of the first, surged through the crowd. Following in his wake Stone saw Lefty ploughing on and, back of him, his face pale, Healy.
My brother here 'll keep time," said the first man. Ned Grinm's my name. Chuck some sand on that dancing floor, boys. Some of you see that Greaser shucked of his knife. He's got one somewhere."
