A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill

								

and taken out the key.
A blinding flash of lightning sent him scurrying back to his
hiding-place, where he sank on the floor, shivering and cringing. Nearer
and nearer roared the thunder, and the wind seemed as anxious to get
into the house as he was eager to get out of it. Gradually his arms and
legs ceased jerking, his head relaxed against an empty box, he laid his
hand against the cheek that had been patted and forgot his troubles in
sleep.
When he awoke he heard loud voices overhead. At first he supposed he was
at home, and that the voice was only Mr. Flathers enjoying one of his
periodical backslidings. But Dick Sheeley's voice recalled him; Dick
was mad at somebody, and when Dick got mad he fought. Not a boy on
Billy-goat Hill but would have faced death to see the ex-prizefighter
in a row. It was a distinction that placed one at a bound in the front
ranks of juvenile aristocracy.
Chick crept from his hiding-place and listened. The voices grew louder
and more excited. Drawn as by a magnet he slipped up the stairs step by
step. At the top was an off-set in the hall, a corner in which he could
hide, unseen from the open door beyond. There he lay on his stomach
and wriggled forward until his eye was on a line with the crack in the
half-open door.
Three men were sitting around a card table, two of them with their backs
to him; and Dick facing them with his jaw set and his teeth showing. All
three were talking at once, and Dick was the most excited of the three.
“You didn't have no ace of spades to show down! You discarded it. You
know you did, you--cheat!” He had risen and was shaking his fist in the
face of the thin young man.
“It's a lie, you common cur!” cried the other wildly, but before the
words were well out of his mouth, Sheeley's mighty right arm had shot
out across the table and struck him in the face.
“Sheeley! For God's sake, don't you see Dillingham's drunk?” protested
the other young man whom Chick recognized as his friend of the
afternoon.
“Drunk or no drunk, he can't call me a liar!” yelled Sheeley, and the
next instant Chick, with his heart pounding madly between him and the
floor, was in his element. It was a fight! A real one, in which the hero
of Billy-goat Hill held his own against two opponents.
The tumblers and the whisky bottles went first, the liquor dripping
from the table to floor; then a chair was overturned, and a window-pane
shattered to the ground below.
The thin young man hadn't sense to stop; again and again he flung his
insults at the infuriated Sheeley, impatiently fighting off the efforts
of his companion who sought to part them. Suddenly Chick saw him step
back, while the others were grappling, and fumble in his rear pocket.
He saw him steady himself against the door jamb, not four feet away,
and raise a pistol. There was a sharp report, a smothered groan, then a
heavy fall.
The man with the pistol flung it through the broken window, then