“I’d have gone out an’ rustled another gun an’ come back here an’ salivated you.”
“That’s just what you would have done,” smiled Hollis. “I intend to stay in this country, Ten Spot, and if I had turned you loose without an understanding you would have shot me at the first opportunity. As it stands now you owe me—-”
“As it stands now,” interrupted Ten Spot, a queer expression on his face, “I’m done shootin’ as far as you’re concerned.” He walked to the door, hesitated on the threshold and looked back. “Mister man,” he said slowly, “mebbe you won’t lick Big Bill in this here little mix-up, but I’m telling you that you’re goin’ to give him a damn good run for his money! So-long.”
He stepped down and disappeared. For a moment Hollis looked after him, and then he sat down at the desk, his face softening into a satisfied smile. It was something to receive a tribute from a man like Ten Spot.
CHAPTER X
THE LOST TRAIL
It was after seven o’clock when Hollis mounted his pony in the rear of the Kicker office and rode out over the plains toward the Circle Bar. He was properly elated by the outcome of his affair with Ten Spot. The latter had come to the Kicker office as an enemy looking for an opportunity to kill. He had left the office, perhaps not a friend, but at least a neutral, sympathetic onlooker, for according to Hollis’s interpretation of his words at parting he would take no further part in Dunlavey’s campaign–at least he would do no more shooting.
Hollis was compelled to make a long detour in order to strike the Circle Bar trail, and when at seven-thirty o’clock he rode down through a dry arroyo toward a little basin which he must cross to reach a ridge that had been his landmark during all his trips back and forth from Dry Bottom to the Circle Bar, dusk had fallen and the shadows of the oncoming night were settling somberly down over the plains.
He rode slowly forward; there was no reason for haste, for he had told Potter to say nothing about the reason of his delay in leaving Dry Bottom, and Potter would not expect him before nine o’clock. Hollis had warmed toward Potter this day; there had been in the old printer’s manner that afternoon a certain solicitous concern and sympathy that had struck a responsive chord in his heart. He was not a sentimentalist, but many times during his acquaintance with Potter he had felt a genuine pity for the man. It had been this sentiment which had moved him to ask Potter to remove temporarily to the Circle Bar, though one consideration had been the fact at the Circle Bar he would most of the time be beyond the evil influence of Dry Bottom’s saloons. That Potter appreciated this had been shown by his successful fight against temptation the night before, when postponement of the publication of the Kicker would have been fraught with serious consequences.
Riding down through the little basin at the end of the arroyo Hollis yielded to a deep, stirring satisfaction over the excellent beginning he had made in his fight against Dunlavey and the interests behind him. Many times he smiled, thinking of the surprise his old friends in the East must have felt over the perusal of their copies of the Kicker; over the information that he–who had been something of a figure in Eastern newspaperdom–had become the owner and editor of a newspaper in a God-forsaken town in New Mexico, and that at the outset he was waging war against interests that ridiculed a judge of the United States Court. He smiled grimly. They might be surprised, but they must feel, all who knew him, that he would stay and fight until victory rewarded him or until black, bitter defeat became his portion. There could be no compromise.