"What do you want me to do ?" "Peg opined that if ye would settle with him for the damages to his leg, and pay him for the scare ye give him, and settle with his jacks for what ye did to them, he might be willin' to let ye off." Grace said something to Elfreda under her breath and Elfreda nodded.
Both saw that Lieutenant Wingate's good nature was slipping from him, that his temper was rising.
"Don't do anything rash, Hippy," urged Grace in a low tone.
"If I refuse, what then ?" he demanded belligerently, addressing the man.
"That's up to ye." "I refuse to pay one copper cent!" roared Hippy.

"Go tell that timber-legged friend of yours that if he bothers us again he will either get a bullet through his real leg or land in jail or both.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it! I don't believe you are deputies at all." "Then yer under arrest.

The whole pack of ye is under arrest!" shouted the deputy, suddenly throwing up his rifle.
_Bang!_ A bullet whizzed past the deputy's head, fired from the ready rifle of Joe Shafto, who, with finger on the trigger, was glaring through her big horn-rimmed spectacles, alert for a suggestive move on the part of either of the three men, which would be the signal for another shot from her rifle..