“I didn’t write out my resignation when I quit your outfit at the Powderhorn Crossing,” said Bertram, sitting down on the porch and lighting a cigarette, “but you knew I’d resigned.”
“You hadn’t ought to have done it, boy,” said Swingley. “You ought to have stayed with us. It didn’t seem to pay you to quit us, for it looks as if you’d been havin’ a struggle of it.”
“He was shot in the shoulder when he was brought here,” observed Uncle Billy. “A few more days will find him as good as new.”
Swingley’s face showed genuine astonishment. “Somebody got ahead of Milt Bertram on the draw! Well I’ll be dashed!” he exclaimed. “I wouldn’t have believed anybody could have done that, unless it might be Tom Hoog, here.”
“Or mebbe yourself,” put in Hoog.
“Oh, well, count us as equals,” went on Swingley. “But somebody must have got Milt from ambush.”
“Well, you know a lot about ambushes,” observed Bertram calmly. “Especially about throwing blazing straw from iron ambushes, I might say.”
Bertram was not certain that it had been Swingley who had been behind the go-devil, who had tossed out the burning straw which had set fire to the cabin. His chance shot told, for Swingley’s brows darkened.
“That’s no kind of talk from you, Bertram,” he said. “Remember we count you one of us. If you don’t come with us, some one of these rustlers will shoot you before you get your horse’s nose turned out of this country.”
“You know when and where I quit, and add to that knowledge by telling you why I quit,” pursued the Texan. “It was because I didn’t intend to be a party to a deliberate murder, such as you and those with you committed, there at the Powderhorn Crossing.”