"No message, thanks," said Red Jim. "Nobody to leave them to and
nothing to leave but a hoss that somebody else will ride and a gun
that somebody else will shoot."
"And the girl?" said Lew Hervey.
And a thrill of consummate satisfaction passed through him, for Red
Perris had plainly been startled out of his calm.
"A girl?"
"You know what I mean. Marianne Jordan."
He smiled knowingly.
"Well?" said Perris, breathing hard.
"Why, you fool," cried the foreman, "don't you know she's gone plumb
wild about you? Didn't she come begging to me to get you out of
trouble?"
"You lie!" burst out Perris.
But by his roving glance, by the sudden outpouring of sweat which
gleamed on his forehead, Hervey knew that he had shaken his man to the
soul. By playing carefully on this string might he not reduce even
this care-free fighter to trembling love of life? Might he not make
Red Perris cringe! All cowards feel that their own vice exists in
others. Hervey, in his entire life, had dreaded nothing saving Red
Jim, and now he felt that he had found the thing which would make life
too dear to Perris to be given up with a smile.
"Begging? I'll tell a man she did!" nodded Hervey.
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