“Getting into the quick, am I?” Routt chuckled.
“Why, no. I just commented on the fact that....”
Routt asked solicitously: “Look here. You’re not sore, are you? You know, the understanding was that this was to be a real fight.”
“Of course,” Wint agreed. “And I’m not sore. Go as far as you like.”
A moment later, Routt said: “I heard Amos was going to throw you down. Anything in that? If he does, you haven’t got a chance.”
“Nothing in it,” Wint told him. “I had a talk with Amos last night.”
Routt laughed and said Amos’s promises didn’t amount to anything. “Is he backing you; or is he holding off?” he asked. “I haven’t heard that he’s doing much.”
“You’ll hear in due time,” Wint told him.
He thought, afterward, that it was a curious coincidence that Routt should have said this about Amos on this particular morning. It was almost as though Routt had really had some foreknowledge. But at the time, the question made no great impression on him.
When they turned into the Post Office, the mail had not yet been distributed, and the windows were closed. There were perhaps a dozen men there, waiting before their boxes, talking, smoking, spitting on the floor. Routt and Wint took their places among these men; and Routt stuck near Wint. There was some good-natured chaffing. And after a little, Amos and Peter Gergue came in together. Every one had a word for Amos. It was a minute or two after he came in the door before he worked back through the groups to where Routt and Wint stood. He looked at the two, head on one side, and Wint said: