"My boy," the old man went on, very pleasantly but not patronizingly, "don't bother Bill McCartney. We don't love him none—but we talk when he ain't 'round." He was speaking very directly now and had begun to fill his pipe deliberately. "The boys can tell you about him. There's a hardy youngster here in camp by the name of Lush Currie—"
The old man was interrupted suddenly by the laughter of the other members of the group. At first he seemed ready to join in the chorus he had unwittingly provoked, but he glanced once at King and checked himself immediately. Then he turned to the men with a look in which there was a mingling of anger and appeal.
"Well," he said abruptly, "what are you laughin' at?"
If the remark relieved the old man's embarrassment it certainly did not check the hilarity of the men. But when King stepped forward and looked at them with a slow smile playing about the corners of his lips and drawing the lines of his mouth even more tensely, the laughing ceased at once and the men waited in silence for him to speak.
"Don't you go to making plans for me and this man, McCartney," King said, and his steady gaze seemed to take them all in at once as he spoke. "You better get straight on this—McCartney hasn't done me a speck o' harm—not yet he hasn't."
"Pray goddlemighty hard he don't!" replied one of the men, but the remark elicited scarcely more than a smile from the others—and not even so much as a smile from the old man.
"And I'm not going to lose time praying about it, either," King observed, his eyes upon the speaker.
He turned and went back to his horse, where he proceeded in a leisurely way to adjust the saddle. In a few minutes he was ready to leave, and was on the point of getting up when he heard a step approaching, and pausing to look behind him observed the old man coming round the corner of the corral. He was alone, and as he came forward he took his pipe from his mouth and tapped the bowl gently against the palm of his hand to empty it.
"My name's Gabe Smith," he said in his high, thin voice, "an' yours?"
King gave him his name.