Translation of ergattern

A bystander who watched the entire scene all the time decided to help me. He was an older man, around seventy, but nonetheless he went to the oldest of these kids and slapped him. The boy was sixteen.
The short story 'Hills like white elephants' is a short story about a relationship between a man and a young girl, based on having sexual encounters. The meaning of this story is not immediately recognizable.
We managed to get a few hours of bad sleep and arrived at the destination called Lao Cai, the capital of the province with the same name. It was only 370km from Hanoi, but the ride lasted nine hours.