"Nope, he ain't no preacher," corrected Meshackatee grimly. "And say, if we're going, let's start."
"Take him over to the Rock House, then," ordered Isham gruffly, "and don't let him git away."
"Very well, sir," answered Meshackatee, and with a half-mocking salute he led his prisoner away.
They were well up the trail before either of them spoke and then Meshackatee broke the silence.
"I'll take your word of honor," he said, "that you won't try to quit me on the trail. They'll hold me responsible, now."
"You have it," replied Hall at length, "but I must say I'm surprised to find a man like you in the company of such unprincipled hounds."
"Oh, they ain't so bad," responded Meshackatee cheerfully, "except when Isham runs off at the head. He makes more enemies by shooting off his mouth than he can hire gunmen at ten dollars a day. That's me, you understand—I'm a hired bravo, as they call us in the Geronimo Blade—but when a man buys my services he doesn't buy me, and I think what I dad-blamed please."
"Well, what do you think, then, of the Scarboroughs' methods of holding up strangers on the trail? I've seen some rough work but the way they treated me made the blood fairly boil in my veins!"
"It sure makes 'em sore," observed Meshackatee philosophically, "to be roped that way at the spring. And that hangman's knot and all, it's downright insulting—a man never quite gits over it."
"No, he doesn't," assented Hall, and rode on in brooding silence, for he was still in the hands of his enemies.