"You sure were. We were going to hold you up to-morrow, if we found a good place, but you got the jump on us. You were closer than we thought. So it seems I'm the only one left, bar Blake, and I don't count him. He quit us yesterday to save his skin. Maybe he was wise, at that."
"Blake is dead."
The big man exclaimed in astonishment. "Dead! How?"
Angus told him. Also he told why he himself had hunted Blake. Gavin French uttered a deep malediction.
"If I had known this," he said, "he would never have come with us. I think I would have handled him myself. But I don't suppose you believe that."
"Yes," Angus returned. "You are a man, and he never was."
Gavin French eyed him for a moment. "I guess you're right—about him, anyway," he said. "He got what was coming to him. Well, that leaves me—and Kathleen." He shook his head moodily. "I tell you straight, Mackay, that I'm not going to be taken. I've stood you up, but I don't know what I'm going to do with you. If you'll give me your word to go back to your bunch and give me that much start, you may pick up your gun and go."
"Will you answer me one question straight?" Angus asked.
"Anything you like," the big man promised. "It won't make much difference now."
"Gavin French, did you kill my father?"