“Jim, you out here to buy some cattle? Can I sell you some of mine?”
“You know I don’t want to buy cattle,” Halliday replied, sulkily.
“No? Then maybe you’ve come to ask me if it’s goin’ to rain?” Mead smilingly replied.
“I reckon you know what I want, Emerson Mead,” Halliday said angrily, as if nettled by Mead’s assured, good-natured tone and manner. “You know you’re a fugitive from justice, and that it’s my duty to take you back to jail.”
“Oh, then you want me!” said Mead, as if greatly surprised.
“That’s what, old man!” Halliday’s voice and manner suddenly became genial. He thought Mead was going to surrender, as he had done before. He had no desire for a battle, even four to one, with the man who had the reputation of being the best and coolest shot in the southwest, for he knew that he would be the first target for that unerring aim, and he was accordingly much relieved by the absence of defiance and anger in Mead’s manner.
“You want me, do you?” said Mead, his voice suddenly becoming sarcastic. “Is that what you’ve been waitin’ around the Fillmore ranch the last three weeks for? Why didn’t you come straight over to my house and say so, like a man who wasn’t afraid? You want me, do you? Well, now, what are you goin’ to do about it?” There was a taunt in Mead’s tone that stirred the others to anger. Mead knew perfectly well what his reputation was, and he knew, too, that they were afraid of him.
“You won’t surrender?”
“Whenever you’ve got any evidence for a warrant to stand on I’ll give myself up. I let you take me in before to stop trouble, but I won’t do it again, and you, and all your outfit, had better let me alone. I’m not goin’ to be run in on any fool charge fixed up to help the Fillmore Company do me up. That’s all there is about it, and you-all had better turn tail and go back to camp.”
While he was speaking the foreman said something to Antone Colorow, and the man left the group and trotted away toward Mead’s left as if he were going back to camp. Without seeming to notice his departure, Mead watched the cow-boy’s actions from a corner of his eye while he listened to Jim Halliday: