“You make it all sound so much like the plot of any western picture,” he remarked, “that I can only think of what the answer would be in any western. If I were Don, I guess I’d just cut down your fence and drive my cattle right through to your beautiful new dam.”
“And you know what happens in westerns when somebody does that,” Valmon said in the same tone.
“I don’t want any fighting,” Morland said, with the slightest jerkiness in his voice. “If you’re really in trouble, and you come to me properly, we’ll see if we can work something out. Perhaps I could let you water your cattle over here. I just don’t like you pretending to threaten me.”
“It’s the ham in him,” murmured the Saint, so lightly that for a second he didn’t seem to have said anything, and then calmly, astonishingly, so unpredictably that somehow it was not instantly believable, he began to sing something to himself to the tune of “Home on the Range”:
“Oh give me a ham
With a lovely new dam
Where the skunks and the coyotes can play—”
Valmon snapped to his feet, and his smile was gone.
“All right,” he said. “I’ve made you a fair offer. I’ll give you just twenty-four hours to take it. You can come and tell me tomorrow night. If you think I’m pretending, don’t come. You’ll find out when I start blasting the next morning.”
Morland stood up also, more slowly, his face a little paler.