"It don't work. You try to face me out before all my men. You
threaten me. You show off your gun-fighting, damn you, and then you
call it murder when I beat you fair and square and--"
He found it impossible to continue. The prisoner was actually smiling.
"Hound dogs always hunt in the dark," said Red Jim.
A quiver of fear ran through Hervey. Indeed, he was haunted by chilly
uneasiness all the time. In vain he assured himself with reason that
his victim was utterly helpless. A ghostly dread remained in the back
of his mind that through some mysterious agency the red-headed man
would be liberated, and then----. Hervey shuddered in vital earnest.
What would happen to a crow that dared trap an eagle.
"I'm due back at the ranch," said Hervey, "to tell 'em how you jumped
me here while I was waiting here quiet to warn you again to get out
of the Valley of the Eagles peaceable. Before I go, Perris, is they
anything you want done, any messages you want to leave behind you?"
And he set his teeth when he saw that Perris did not blench. He was
perfectly quiet. Nearness to death sometimes acts in this manner. It
reduces men to the unaffected simplicity of children.
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