The boy looked over his shoulder without moving a
muscle, but the Hon. Samuel Budd, who came in at that moment,
pinioned the fellow's arms from behind and Bob took his weapon
away.
"Hell," said the mountaineer, "I didn't aim to hurt the little
feller. I jes' wanted to see if I could skeer him."
"Well, brother, 'tis scarce a merry jest," quoth the Hon. Sam, and
he looked sharply at Jack through his big spectacles as the two
led the man off to the calaboose: for he suspected that the
saloon-keeper was at the bottom of the trick. Jack's time came
only the next day. He had regarded it as the limit of indignity
when an ordinance was up that nobody should blow a whistle except
a member of the Guard, and it was great fun for him to have some
drunken customer blow a whistle and then stand in his door and
laugh at the policemen running in from all directions. That day
Jack tried the whistle himself and Hale ran down.
"Who did that?" he asked. Jack felt bold that morning.
"I blowed it."
Hale thought for a moment. The ordinance against blowing a whistle
had not yet been passed, but he made up his mind that, under the
circumstances, Jack's blowing was a breach of the peace, since the
Guard had adopted that signal.
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