“It’s a frame-up—a frame-up. Both of you are out to get me!”
“Frame-up!”
This was Woodward. He was a sinister figure, with his black beard seeming to bristle with passion, his eyes flaming with it; all his muscles tensed and quivering, and his right hand, with clawlike fingers, poised above the butt of his pistol.
“Frame-up!” he repeated, laughing hoarsely between his teeth. “Hell’s fire! Do you think it takes two men to ‘get’ you—you miserable whelp?
“I’ve been waitin’ for this day—waitin’ for it, waitin’ to get you alone—waitin’ for the boys to go so’s I could tell you somethin’.
“You know what it is. You ain’t guessin’, eh? Listen while I tell you somethin’. The day ‘Drag’ Harlan got in Lamo he brought news that Lane Morgan had been killed out in the desert. I heard the boys sayin’ you had a hand in it. But I thought that was just talk. I didn’t believe you was that kind of a skunk. I waited.
“Then you sent me over to the edge of the level, near the Rancho Seco—where Harlan found that flattened grass when he rode over here. You told me to watch Harlan and Barbara Morgan. You said you thought Harlan would try some sneak game with her.
“You can gamble I watched. I saw Harlan standin’ guard over her; I saw him follow that sneak Lawson. I heard the shot that killed Lawson, an’ I saw Harlan tote him downstairs, an’ then set on the door-sill all night, guardin’ Barbara Morgan.
“The sneakin’ game was played by you, Haydon. When I saw Harlan headin’ toward the valley the day he come here, I lit out ahead of him. And when he got to the timber over there I brought him in.
“An’ I heard you talk that day. I heard him sayin’ that you killed Lane Morgan. He said my dad told him you fired the shot that killed him.”