“I’ll make you talk,” he gritted. “Here, Tommy, you take the horses to the stable,” he ordered. “Unsaddle ’em. Shut the door when you go out, so the cold air won’t bother Mr. Tyler. His feet are chilly now.”
Thatcher glanced from Robin to Steele, back to Robin again. His brows crinkled a little. He seemed uncertain. But he went out without a word.
“Now, darn your hide,” Mark’s tone was acid. “I hate to mess up a nice clean cabin, but you’ve bothered me long enough.”
His fingers closed on the grip of his belt gun.
“You’ve bothered me long enough you — — —!” he snarled. “You hear me?”
Through Robin’s mind flashed the thought that deadly as Steele was he could not quite cold-bloodedly shoot down a man who sat in a chair and stared dumbly at him. Hence the vile epithets. Mark had to stir him up—or work himself up. Robin faced slowly about on the chair.
“I hear you,” he said quietly. “Go ahead, shoot. You’ll be proud of yourself after you’ve put out my light. You’re a powerful brave man, Steele.”
Robin said that casually, for all his heart was beating double-quick. Whether he rose to Steele’s taunting or not the man would kill him. Intention, determination, were explicit on Shining Mark’s face, in his stony stare, the slow withdrawal of his gun from its scabbard. Robin was a menace Steele must remove for his own safety. That cold feeling went over Robin again in a wave.
But all the time his stockinged toes were pressing harder and harder into the dirt floor, the muscles of his legs were tensing. At least he would not die like a tame sheep, bleating for mercy where there was no mercy.
And when the gun leaped clear with a sudden jerk, as if Steele had made up his mind to get the job done, Robin leaped also.