“Well, don’t choke!” said the cowman, fingering his gun coldly. “Go ahead and stop it, why don’t you?”
He paused, a set smile on his lips, and for a moment their eyes met in the baleful glare which rival wolves, the leaders of their packs, confer upon each other. Then Hardy stepped out into the open, holding up his hand for peace.
“You are mistaken, Mr. Swope,” he said quietly. “Jeff hasn’t shot up any camps––he hasn’t even packed a gun for the last three days.”
“Oh, he hain’t, hey?” sneered the sheepman, showing his jagged teeth. “He seems to have one now.”
“You betcher neck I have,” cried Creede, flaring up at the implication, “and if you’re lookin’ for trouble, Jasp Swope, you can open up any time.”
“W’y what’s the matter with you?” protested Swope righteously. “You must have somethin’ on your mind, the way you act.”
Then without waiting for a reply to this innuendo he turned his attention to Hardy.
“He hain’t shot up any camps,” he repeated, “ner packed a gun for three days, hey? Now here’s where I prove you a liar, Mr. Smarty. I seen him with my own eyes take six shots at one of my herders this very mornin’––and you was there!”
He punctuated his speech by successive downward 351 jabs of his grimy forefinger as if he were stabbing his adversary to the heart, and Hardy turned faint and sick with chagrin. Never had he hated a man as he hated this great, overbearing brute before him––this man-beast, with his hairy chest and freckled hands that clutched at him like an ape’s. Something hidden, a demon primordial and violent, rose up in him against this crude barbarian with his bristling beard and gloating pig eyes, and he forgot everything but his own rage at being trapped.
“You lie!” he cried passionately; and then in his anger he added a word which he had never used, a word which goes deep under the skin and makes men fight.