Spirlaw reached out his hand and laid it on Keating’s shoulder, as he shook his head.
“I’ve got a whole lot to lose,” he answered, his hard face softening a little. “A whole lot. I can’t say things the way you do, but I guess you’ll understand. You got something that means a whole lot to you, that you’d risk anything for—what you want to do and what you want to leave behind you when it comes along time to cash in. Well, I guess most of us have in one way or another, though mabbe it don’t rank anywheres up to that. I reckon, too, a whole lot of us don’t never think to put it in words, an’ a whole lot of us couldn’t if we tried to, but it’s there with any man that’s any good. I’d rather go out for keeps than pull out—I’d rather they’d plant me. D’ye think I’d want to live an’ have to cross the street because I couldn’t look even a Polack in the eyes—a man would be better dead, what?”
For a moment Keating did not answer, he seemed to be weighing the possibility of still shaking the determination of the road boss before accepting it as irrevocable: then, evidently coming to the conclusion that it was useless to argue further, he pointed to the revolvers.
“Then the sooner you load those the better,” he jerked out.
Spirlaw looked at him curiously, questioningly.
“Because,” went on Keating, answering the unspoken interrogation, “when I dropped off the train I saw that fellow Kuryla—he was pointed out to me in Big Cloud yesterday—and three or four more drop off on the other side. I didn’t know they were on the train until then, of course, or I would have had them put off. There isn’t much doubt about what they are here for, is there?”
“So that’s it, is it?” Spirlaw ripped out with an oath. “No, there ain’t much doubt!”
He snatched up a cartridge-box, slit the paper band with his thumb nail, and, breaking the revolvers, began to cram the cartridges into the cylinders. His face was twitching and the red that flushed it shaded to a deep purple. Not another word came from him—just a deadly quiet. He thrust the weapons into his pockets, strode to the door, opened it, stepped over the threshold—and stopped. An instant he hung there in indecision, then he came back, shut the door behind him, sat down on the edge of his bunk, and looked at Keating grimly.
“There’s been one train along, there’ll be another,” he snapped. “An’ the first one that comes you’ll get aboard of. I hate to keep those whinin’ coyotes waitin’, but——”
“I’ll take no train,” Keating cut in coolly; “but I’ll take a revolver.”