“Jode is a soft-sawdering beggar, and knows how to get around him. It gets my goat the way a man as smart as the old colonel allows himself to be taken in. But it can’t last. Hawtrey’s eyes are bound to be opened some time.”
“I don’t want to be the one that strips the mask away from Jode. In order to believe that Jode is a schemer, the colonel will have to find it out for himself.”
“You can’t be too ladylike about it. When you fight the devil, you know, you’ve got to use fire.”
Noon came, and the early hours of afternoon began drifting away. It was about two o’clock when a visitor dropped in at Dolliver’s. He came on horseback, left his mount at Dolliver’s hitching pole, and pushed a bulletlike head through the door of the front room.
“How’s the patient?” he asked of Ballard.
Ballard recognized the fellow as one Mark Hotchkiss, a Gold Hiller belonging with the rival camp.
“Come in, and ask him yourself,” Ballard answered.
A bony youth of seventeen projected himself through the door. Darrel turned his head on the pillow and looked at him.
“Hello, Hotch,” said he. “What’re you doing here?”
“Came to find out how you’re makin’ it,” grinned Hotchkiss.