“Me? Huh! I don’t have to. Ye’ll jest fall into it.”
“Fall into it. Sure it won’t come crawling up on me from behind?”
The black lashes flickered.
“What ye mean by that?”
“Your name’s Snake.”
Sanders’ beady stare beat into his inscrutable face. Presently the serpentine man grinned and subtly relaxed.
“Names don’t hurt. Think I’d try to do ye after I got my money, mebbe? That ain’t my way, stranger. Folks calls me Snake ’cause I can handle snakes. They don’t never bite me. I can tromp right round ’em into my bare feet, an’ pick ’em up into my bare hands, an’ they lemme alone. I can talk to ’em—snake talk—an’ they mind. If I’d of been over yender ’fore ye kilt that snake o’ yourn, now, I could have sent him away jest by talkin’ to him.”
His gaze never wavered as he talked. He gave no sign of guilt. Unaware that he had been observed in the little round mirror, he was sure there was nothing to connect him in this man’s mind with the fact that a copperhead had lurked beside the pack, and he was bold enough to make capital of the presence of that reptile. Evidently he was proud both of his name and his diabolical gift.
“Ye must have hearn o’ me,” he went on. “I’ve done business before. Nobody round here knows it, o’ course. I keep my tracks covered. But they must have told ye outside ’bout Snake Sanders. I’m him.”
Douglas kept the disgust out of his face. He wanted to know just how deep was this man’s duplicity. He had not yet learned that it was absolutely bottomless.