“The hell you don’t! You can’t put that over on me! Some other guy is furnishing it. I know you—you can’t get along two hours without it. I’m not going to stand for this. There isn’t any guy going to steal my girl!”
“Hush, Wilson!” she cautioned. “For God’s sake keep still! Some one might hear you.”
“I don’t give a damn who hears me. I’m here to tell the world that no one is going to take my girl away from me. I’ve found you, and you’re going back with me, do you understand?”
She came very close to him, her eyes blazing wrathfully.
“I’m not going back with you, Wilson Crumb,” she said. “If you tell, or if you ever threaten me again in any way, I’ll kill you. I managed to escape you, and I have found happiness at last, and no one shall take it away from me!”
“What about my happiness? You lived with me two years. I love you, and, by God, I’m going to have you, if I have to——”
A door slammed behind them, and they both turned to see Custer Pennington standing in the arcade outside his door, looking at them.
“I beg your pardon,” he said, his voice chilling. “Did I interrupt?”
“This man is looking for some one, Custer,” said Shannon, and turned to reënter the house.
Confronted by a man, Crumb’s bravado had vanished. Intuitively he guessed that he was looking at the man who had stolen Gaza from him; but he was a very big young man, with broad shoulders and muscles that his flannel shirt and riding breeches did not conceal. Crumb decided that if he was going to have trouble with this man, it would be safer to commence hostilities at a time when the other was not looking.