"Partner," drawled Red Perris, and the silken smoothness of his tones
was ample proof that he was enraged. "I don't know the ways you folks
have up here, but around the parts where I've been, a gent that's big
enough to ride is big enough to saddle his own hoss."
The reply of Lew Hervey was just sharp enough to goad the
newcomer--just soft enough to stay on the windward side of an insult.
"I'll tell you," he said quietly. "Around the Valley of the Eagles,
the boys do what the foreman asks 'em to do, most generally. And the
foreman don't play favorites. I'm waiting for that hoss, Perris."
Perris rolled a cigarette, and smiled as he looked at Hervey. It was a
sickly smile, his lips being white and stiff. And in another, it might
have been considered a sign of fear. In Red Perris everyone there
knew it was simply the badge of a rising fury. They knew, by the same
token, that he was as dangerous as he had been advertised. Men whom
anger reddens are blinded by it; but those who turn pale never stop
thinking. Meantime, Red Jim looked at Hervey and looked at the
cowpunchers behind Hervey. It was not hard to see that in a pinch they
would be solid behind their foreman.
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