“You’re hiding yours to-day, Rebstock.”
“No matter; I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll give you all the horseflesh you can kill and all the men you can hire to go after him, and I’ll bury your dead myself. You think he can’t shoot? I give you a tip on the square.” Whispering Smith snorted. “He’ll shoot the four buttons off your coat in four shots.” Smith kicked Rebstock’s dog contemptuously. “And do it while you are falling down. I’ve seen him do it,” persisted Rebstock, 289 moist with perspiration. “I’m not looking for a chance to go against a sure thing; I wash my hands of the job.”
Whispering Smith rose. “It was no trick to see he had you scared to death. You are losing your wits, old man. The albino is a faker, and I tell you I am going to run him out of the country.” Whispering Smith reached for his hat. “Our treaty ends right here. You promised to harbor no man in your sink that ever went against our road. You know as well as I do that this man, with four others, held up our train night before last at Tower W, shot our engineman to death for mere delight, killed a messenger, took sixty-five thousand dollars out of the through safe, and made his good get-away. Now, don’t lie; you know every word of it, and you thought you could pull it out of me by a bluff. I track him to your door. He is inside the Cache this minute. You know every curve and canyon and pocket and washout in it, and every cut-throat and jail-bird in it, and they pay you blood-money and hush-money every month; and when I ask you not to give up a dozen men the company is entitled to, but merely to send this pink-eyed lobster out with his guns to talk with me, you wash your hands of the job, do you? Now listen. If you don’t send Du Sang into the open before noon to-morrow, I’ll run every 290 living steer and every living man out of Williams Cache before I cross the Crawling Stone again, so help me God! And I’ll send for cowboys within thirty minutes to begin the job. I’ll scrape your Deep Creek canyons till the rattlesnakes squeal. I’ll make Williams Cache so wild that a timber-wolf can’t follow his own trail through it. You’ll break with me, will you, Rebstock? Then wind up your bank account; before I finish with you I’ll put you in stripes and feed buzzards off your table.”
Rebstock’s face was apoplectic. He choked with a torrent of oaths. Whispering Smith, paying no attention, walked out to where Kennedy was waiting. He swung into the saddle, ignoring Rebstock’s abjurations, and with Kennedy rode away.
“It is hard to do anything with a man that is scared to death,” said Smith to his companion. “Then, too, Rebstock’s nephew is probably in this. In any case, when Du Sang has got Rebstock scared, he is a dangerous man to be abroad. We have got to smoke him out, Farrell. Lance Dunning insisted the other day he wanted to do me a favor. I’ll see if he’ll lend me Stormy Gorman and some of his cowpunchers for a round-up. We’ve got to smoke Du Sang out. A round-up is the thing. But, by Heaven, if that round-up is 291 actually pulled off it will be a classic when you and I are gone.”
Thirty minutes afterward, messengers had taken the Frenchman trail for Lance Dunning’s cowboys.