Gasset scratched his head and tilted the bottle again. “I don’t know, if you don’t. But it appears like to me, if anybody had killed a sister of mine I’d want to get square. And I reckon I wouldn’t split any hairs about his being drunk or sober at the time, nor yet about whether he went for to do it meaningly or just did it by happen-so.”
Harding ignored the implied reproach and went on to the more important matter:
“Damn that! It is enough for me to know that you were trying to kill George Brant,” he said coolly. “Do you still feel that way?”
Gasset rose unsteadily and the dull eyes of him glowed in their sockets. “Look at me now, Jim, and then recollect, if you can, what-all I used to be. You know what that was; not any man in the camp could put me on my back unless I was drunk. And now look at me—a poor, miser’ble, broke-up wrack, just out o’ the horspital! He done it—filled me plum full of lead when I was too crazy drunk to see single; that’s what he done!”
“Then I suppose you wouldn’t be sorry if you had the chance to even up with him,” said Harding, hastily building up a plan which would enable him to make use of this opportune ally.
“Now you are talking! Say, Jim, I’m hanging on to what little scrap of life he has left me for just nothing else. Understand?”
“Good; that is business,” quoth Harding. “I am with you to stay. Find him for me, and I’ll help you square the deal.”
“Find him?” echoed Gasset. “Why, man alive, he is right out yonder at the faro table! You rubbed up against him coming in here!”
“The devil you say!” Harding hastily resumed the wig and the false beard, with a word explanatory. “He mustn’t recognise me, or the game will be up before it begins. Pull up your chair and we’ll talk this thing over.”
Half an hour later the two conspirators left the card room and made their way singly through the crowd in the game room to meet at the bar. Gasset had lingered a moment at Brant’s elbow, and, having seen the winnings, incautiously spoke of them to Harding in Tom Deverney’s hearing. Harding shook his head, and dragged his companion out to the sidewalk.