Then Simon spoke again.
"Mr. Christie, you've got the prettiest and smartest little girl in Lame Gulch," he declared, laying down his proposition in a tone of extreme deliberation; "and you hit her over the head last night, and 't ain't the first time neither."
"Is that the latest news you've got to give us?" asked Christie, passing his hand caressingly over his pistol, which lay like a lap-dog on his knees.
"Better let that alone," said the black-haired gambler, persuasively. "The professor's ben good to my kids."
The threat was so very covert that the sensitive Christie did not feel himself called upon to recognize it as such.
"He ain't no target," Christie declared, with unutterable contempt. "I'd as soon shoot a door-mat!" whereupon he proceeded, in a disengaged manner, to empty the contents of the black bottle into a glass, flinging the bottle under the table, with a praiseworthy regard for appearances.
Simon breathed deep and hard, and again there was an exasperating tremor in his low-pitched voice, which drawled more than usual, as he said:
"No; 't ain't the latest news! What I specially come to tell you was, that if you ever lay hands on that child agin, I'll shoot you deader 'n any door-mat you ever wiped your great cowardly boots on!"
Each word of this speech seemed to cleave its separate, individual way with a slow, ponderous significance. Christie passed his hand absently down the barrel of the pistol on his knees, till his fingers rested on the trigger. If he had had any murderous intention, however, he seemed to think better of it, for he contented himself with a shrug and an oath, and the supercilious inquiry: "What are you givin' us, anyway?" The man of the black beard eyed his movements with a furtive interest. Amberley stood a moment, to give a still more deliberate emphasis to his words, thinking, the while, that in spite of the unvarnished frankness on either side, neither he nor his adversary had quite made each other out. Then he turned and threaded his way among the tables to the door, as quietly and composedly as he had come; while the girl on the stage repeated the assertion in regard to "Jinny's" smart looks, in which she seemed still unable to awaken the slightest interest in those who should have been her auditors. Before he had passed Enoch's chair, which was placed discreetly near the exit, the pair of gamblers were at it again. Not even the luck had been turned by the interruption. Christie was sweeping in the chips to the same refrain of the "cranberry tarts."
When, to Simon's infinite relief, little Eliza appeared at school the next morning, the teacher scrutinized her jealously in search of bumps and bruises. There was nothing to be seen but the original bump, and that was reduced in size, though somewhat intensified in color, since the day before.