“Shot yourself with your own gun, eh?” Robin drawled. “Right in the wishbone, they say. Too bad it wasn’t about six inches higher. Seems like I heard, too, that it wasn’t quite accidental.”
“What you tryin’ to do? Provoke me?” Steele asked coolly. “You act like you wanted to open up a package of trouble. I’d sure accommodate you on the spot if I was heeled. You act real bad when you happen to find me unarmed.”
“You’re a liar as well as a thief,” Robin took a step toward him. “Do you want me to prove it?”
Shining Mark’s face flamed. He looked at Robin, then at Sutherland sitting quietly in his chair, an impassive listener save that his eyes were narrowly watching both men. Mark stared at Robin. That youth laughed aloud in his enemy’s face. A whimsical thought took form in a play on words—steel had lost its temper!
“You’re weakenin’, Mark,” he taunted. “I’ve just come in from Mayne’s ranch. I said you were a liar and a thief. I say it again.”
“I heard you,” Steele replied, making a visible effort at self-control, although his lean face was burning. “You don’t need to say anything to me at all. I’ll drop you in your tracks as soon as I get my hands on a gun, you mouthy pup. You sure do swell up when you happen to have a six-gun on your hip and catch me barehanded.”
“I beat you barehanded once, and I can do it again,” Robin kept his voice low, his tone casual. “I don’t reckon you understand why I called you a liar. I know a Texas trick or two myself. You——”
He darted a forefinger at Mark and the man jumped backward—but not so quickly that Robin’s fingers failed to tap smartly against something hard and outline it briefly under Steele’s coat.
“You got a gun in a Texas holster under your arm,” Robin said contemptuously. “And you talk about being unarmed. As if anything you could say or do would throw me off my guard for a second. You swine! When I think that you put the fear of God in me once, I could laugh. That’s how dangerous you look to me now.”
Robin took off his soft Stetson and slapped Mark across the face. Mark put up his hand and backed away. Behind him Robin heard Adam Sutherland grunt, heard the scrape of his chair legs. Robin laughed again. He remembered the dead cows in Birch Creek. He remembered Tex Matthews’ stiffened body across a bloody saddle, borne by a tired horse, led by a tired rider through a long winter night. He remembered with a bitter clearness Steele swinging his spurred foot from a table in a line camp and saying cold-bloodedly, “I hate to muss up a perfectly good camp but you’ve bothered me long enough.”