“I’ve as good a right in the cañon as you,” Broome persisted. He was in that state of hysterical strain that could not refrain from speech.
“I wouldn’t have touched ye if ye hadn’t come at me with that pick,” he lied. Still not a word from Gard, and Broome kept quiet till they reached camp, and Gard produced a rope.
It was the same with which he had dragged the fellow from the sand the day before; the loop that had been about his body was still in one end. The cowman shrieked when he saw it.
“What are ye goin’ to do to me?” he screamed. “By God! You tell me! What’s that thing fer?”
He sprang upon Gard again, and was tossed back like a child. A moment later he was lying upon the ground, bound hand and foot, and Gard towered above him.
“What am I going to do with you?” he asked, in cold scorn; “What would you do to me, if I was where you are?”
Broome glared his hate, and fear. “Yah!” he snarled, “I’d kill yer. I’ll kill yer yet, if yer don’t look out.”
For reply the other gathered him up, dragged him into the cabin and threw him upon the bed there. Then he went outside.
Gard was in a state of amazement. He looked at his own brown hands, and rolling up a sleeve of his buckskin shirt gazed upon his own right arm, lean, sinewy, knotted with iron muscles. He contracted, then relaxed it, slowly, and finally struck himself a resounding blow on the chest. Then he laughed, under his breath.
“And all this time,” he said, in a sort of wonder, “I’ve thought I was a rather sick man.”