"_And let go of me!"_ at which Kirk, thoroughly
shocked, dropped back as though he could not believe his ears.
"I was takin' the kid home," muttered the man, "just like he says."
"Why were you going in exactly the opposite direction, then?" Ken
demanded.
As he leaped abreast of the man, who was trying to back away, the day's
receipts of the Sturgis Water Line jingled loudly in his trousers
pocket. The stranger, whose first plan had been so rudely interfered
with, determined on the instant not to leave altogether empty-handed,
and planted a forcible and unexpected blow on the side of Ken's head.
Ken staggered and went down, and Kirk, who had been standing dangerously
near all this activity, went down on top of him. It so happened that he
sprawled exactly on top of the trousers pocket aforesaid, and when the
man sought, with hasty and ungentle hands, to remove him from it, Kirk
launched a sudden and violent kick, in the hope of its doing some
execution.
Kirk's boots were stout, and himself horrified and indignant; his heel
caught the stranger with full force in the temple, and the man, too,
was added to the prostrate figures in the darkening field. Two of them
did not long remain prostrate. Ken lurched, bewildered, to his feet, and
seeing his foe stretched by some miracle upon the ground, he bundled
Kirk over the wall and followed giddily. Stumbling down the shadowy
road, with Kirk's hand in his, he said:
"That was good luck.
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