“Sh-sh. He’s not—”
Inch by inch, Rawley was drawing himself backward, until now he was free of the bowlder and Peter. From the sounds, he knew that the two were standing close to the rock. He thought that they were facing the river, though he could not be sure. It did not greatly matter. He inched that way until he could faintly distinguish two upright blots in the darkness of the bowlder’s shadow.
Upon the taller of the two he launched himself, reaching instinctively for the gun he knew was there. His hand closed on the cool steel of the barrel, and he gave a mighty wrench as he went down. Young Jess, caught unawares from behind, had no chance to save himself. Rawley landed full on his back, his chest forcing the face of Young Jess into the gravel. His left hand gripped the back of Jess’s neck.
“Peter, please take this fighting squaw to the house and lock her up somewhere. Then come back here. I want to have a talk with you before I go,” he said hardly. “I can handle this vermin, but I leave the squaw to you.”
“As you like,” Peter’s voice was noncommittal. “Come, Nevada.”
Rawley had expected some outburst from her, some bitter reply to his taunt. But she went away with Peter and spoke no word to any one. So Rawley pulled off his necktie and tied Young Jess’s hands behind him, and made himself a smoke while he waited Peter’s return.
“I’ll git you, and I’ll git you right!” gritted Young Jess, when Rawley had his cigarette going. “You better kill me now, or you’ll see the day you’ll be begging me to kill yuh. I’ll ketch yuh and take yuh back in the mine, an’ I’ll—” He amused himself for some minutes, making up the programme of his revenge. He would finish, he decided, by building a bed of powder kegs and placing Rawley full length upon it, with a ten-foot fuse spitted just before Young Jess bade him good-by.
“You ought to have lived fifty years ago,” Rawley commented indifferently, and blew smoke in his face. “Why don’t yuh squeal for that old buzzard of a dad? Maybe he could help yuh out, right now.”
Young Jess, having just made up his mind to shout for Old Jess to come, shut his mouth so hard his teeth clicked like a dog cracking a bone.
“Any fool can plan the things he’d like to do,” Rawley taunted. “What counts is the fact that you’re on your back, right now, and that I put you there—and you with a gun in your hands! I could kick you in the slats and make you howl like a kicked pup. I could drive your teeth in, so you’d feed yourself in the back of your head the rest of your life! Don’t talk to me—about what you’d like to do! I’m liable to experiment on yuh, just to see how it works.”