“Tell the truth, now—ain’t yuh scared to stay there alone?” Monty’s question was anxious.
Gary shrugged his shoulders and blew a smoke ring, watching it drift up toward the ceiling. “Being scared or not being scared makes no difference whatever. I’m going to stay. For a while, anyway.”
“I wisht you’d tell me what for,” Monty urged uneasily. “A man that can hold down the position and earn the money yuh did in pictures kain’t afford to set around in Johnnywater Cañon lookin’ after two shoats and a dozen or fifteen hens. I don’t agree with Miss Connolly at all. I’d be mighty proud if I could do what I’ve seen yuh-all do in pictures. Your actin’ was real—and I reckon that’s what puts a man at the top. I know the top-notchers all act so good you kain’t ketch ’em at it. Yuh just seem to be lookin’ in on ’em whilst they’re livin’.”
“The best acting I’ve done,” chuckled Gary, “was last night and this morning. I was scared to death that the pinto cat would come and hop up on my lap like she usually does. I’d have had a merry heck of a time acting like she wasn’t there. But I put it over—enough to send him breezing down the cañon, anyway.”
“You’re liable to have trouble with that feller yet,” warned Monty. “If he got an agreement out of Miss Connolly, he ain’t liable to give up the idea of holding her to it. Have yuh-all got a gun?”
“An automatic, yes.” Gary pulled the gun from his hip pocket. “I carry this just in case. I was born and raised where men pack guns—but they didn’t ride with ’em cocked and in their hands ready to shoot, like we do in the movies. There’s a lot of hokum I do before the camera that gives me a pain. So if I should happen to need a gun, I’ve got one. But don’t you worry about James Blaine Hawkins. He won’t show up again.”
“I wouldn’t be none too sure of that,” Monty reiterated admonishingly. “He’s liable to get to thinkin’ it over in town and git his courage back. Things like Johnnywater has got don’t look so important when you’re away off somewhere just thinkin’ about it.”
“I guess you’re right, at that,” Gary admitted. “He’ll probably get over the cat and the Voice, all right, and—that other spell of imagination. But without meaning to brag on myself, I think he’ll study it over a while before he comes around trying to bully me again. You see, Monty, the man’s an awful coward. I slapped him twice and even then he wouldn’t fight. He just backed up away from me and cooled right down.”
“Them’s the kind uh skunks yuh want to look out for,” Monty declared sententiously.
But Gary only laughed at him and called him the original gloom, and insisted upon talking of something altogether different.