The fire began to go out of Badger's eyes when Pike did
not stir and seemed not to breathe.
"I reckon I squeezed a bit too hard!" Badger muttered, regarding the
unconscious youth with some degree of anxiety. "Well, I was wild enough
to choke his heart out!"
He stooped over Pike and saw the livid finger-marks on the throat. Still
Pike did not stir, and the Westerner's anxiety correspondingly grew. He
put a hand on Pike's left breast, and failed to locate the heart-beats.
At last, after an alarming interval, Pike gasped, to Badger's intense
relief.
"I allow I'd better let it go at this," he reflected. "I don't want to
kill the skunk, though if any man whatever deserved to be murdered, he
does. But I don't want anything of that kind against me. As Merry has
told me, I've got an awful temper when it gets started. I shall have to
watch myself against that, same as against red-eye!"
Pike gasped again, and then his breathing came at increasingly frequent
intervals. The students were wildly howling in and around the campus,
but Badger scarcely heard them. He was thinking only of Pike.
"This may keep him in his room a few days," he muttered.
"If it does no more than that, I don't care. He deserved that much. But
he's got to keep clear of me, or I can't be responsible for the
consequences.
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