My outflung left arm caught his legs as I spilled down. He came over on top of me. I kicked him once, caught his gun-arm, and had just decided to bite it when the general puffed up over the edge of the path and prodded the man off me with the muzzle of the shotgun.
When it came my turn to stand up, I found it not so good. My twisted ankle didn’t like to support its share of my hundred-and-eighty-some pounds. Putting most of my weight on the other leg, I turned my flashlight on the prisoner.
“Hello, Flippo!” I exclaimed.
“Hello!” he said without joy in the recognition.
He was a roly-poly Italian youth of twenty-three or -four. I had helped send him to San Quentin four years ago for his part in a payroll stickup. He had been out on parole for several months now.
“The prison board isn’t going to like this,” I told him.
“You got me wrong,” he pleaded. “I ain’t been doing a thing. I was up here to see some friends. And when this thing busted loose I had to hide, because I got a record, and if I’m picked up I’ll be railroaded for it. And now you got me, and you think I’m in on it!”
“You’re a mind reader,” I assured him, and asked the general: “Where can we pack this bird away for a while, under lock and key?”
“In my house there is a lumber-room with a strong door and not a window.”
“That’ll do it. March, Flippo!”
General Pleshskev collared the youth, while I limped along behind them, examining Flippo’s gun, which was loaded except for the one shot he had fired at me, and reloading my own.