CHAPTER 14A DEMAND
Jimmy looked at the clock that hung from a nail in the wall. It was but a few minutes after eight. The message for Rann Duval had been prepared well before the vital hour. Scorn and rage mixed in the soul of Jimmy Raeburn. And still he pondered, desperately. Something had to be done.
He remembered, suddenly, a maxim which Tom Willow was fond of using: “There ain’t anything so bad that it can’t be helped.—All you gotta have is brains and two hands.” Jimmy had two hands, but what was his brain worth?
There sat the great Barry Litton, the idol of Holy Creek, by far the greatest shining star that had ever moved across Jimmy Raeburn’s horizon—and yet he was to sink, and be forever lost to view.
The boy knew perfectly that a man once humbled is never the same again. The de
