“I’ll kill ’im,” he swore. “D’ye think I’ll let ’im live when he’s took the bread out o’ my mouth like he done?”
Westcott regarded him with narrowed eyes.
“You’d be a blasted fool to stand it,” he said, speaking very low, “any set of men are fools to let another man ride over them; but they’re bigger fools if they don’t keep their mouths shut.”
“That’s so,” one of the men commented. “You fellers wanter look out. This here Gard you’re talkin’ about’s a stranger to me, an’ I d’ know all he’s done, but such talk’s plumb dangerous.”
He shook his head with drunken gravity.
“Wha’d you wanter kill ’im for?” he asked of Broome.
“I tell ye he’s a damned murderer,” was the reply. “He’d oughter be killed.”
“Is that right?” The man who did not know Gard turned to Westcott with a profoundly judicial air.
“Why ain’t he hung then?” he went on. “How d’you know he’s guilty?”
Westcott hesitated, considering. He did not look at the questioner.