“Hold your hand right there––right where it is,” said the blue-eyed man sharply.
Whispering Smith smiled, but held his hand rather awkwardly upon his hat-brim.
“No,” continued the spokesman, “we ain’t none of us happened to see Bob or Gene Johnson to-day; but we happen to seen Whispering Smith, and we’ll blow your face off if you move it an inch.”
Smith laughed. “I never quarrel with a man that’s got the drop on me, boys. Now, this is sudden but unexpected. Do I know any of you?” He looked from one face to another before him, with a wide reach in his field of vision for the three hands that were fast on three pistol-butts. “Hold on! I’ve met you somewhere,” he said with easy confidence to the blue-eyed man with the weather-split lip. “Williams Cache, wasn’t it? All right, we’re placed. Now what have you got in for me?”
“I’ve got forty head of steers in for you,” answered the man in the middle, with a splitting oath. “You stole forty head of my steers in that round-up, and I’m going to fill you so full of lead you’ll never run off no more stock for nobody. Don’t look over there to your horse or your rifle. Hold your hands right where they are.”
“Certainly, certainly!”
“When I pull, I shoot!”
“I don’t always do it, but it is business, I acknowledge. 366 When a man pulls he ought to shoot––very often it’s the only chance he ever gets to shoot. Well, it isn’t every man gets the drop on me that easy, but you boys have got it,” continued Whispering Smith in frank admiration. “Only I want to say you’re after the wrong man. That round-up was all Rebstock’s fault, and Rebstock is bound to make good all loss and damage.”
“You’ll make good my share of it right now and here,” said the man with the wash-blue eyes.
“Why, of course,” assented Whispering Smith, “if I must, I must. I suppose I may light a cigarette, boys, before you turn loose the fireworks?”