To McGuire it seemed far from that, for at this revelation his jaw dropped and he stared at Peter as though the entire affair were beyond his comprehension.
"You knew him! A waiter, you!"
"Yes. Misfortune makes strange bedfellows. It was either that or starvation. I preferred to wait."
"For—for the love of God—go on," growled McGuire. His hands were clutching the chair arm and there was madness in his shifting eyes, so Peter watched him keenly.
"I will. He told me how you and he had worked together out in Colorado, up in the San Luis valley, of the gold prospect near Wagon Wheel Gap, of its failure—how you met again in Pueblo and then went down into the copper country—Bisbee, Arizona."
Peter had no pity now. He saw McGuire straighten again in his chair, his gaze shifting past Peter from left to right like a trapped animal. His fingers groped along the chair arms, along the table edge, trembling, eager but uncertain. But the sound of Peter's narrative seemed to fascinate—to hypnotize him.
"Go on——!" he whispered hoarsely. "Go on!"
"You got an outfit and went out into the Gila Desert," continued Peter, painting his picture leisurely, deliberately. "It was horrible—the heat, the sand, the rocks—but you weren't going to fail this time. There was going to be something at the end of this terrible pilgrimage to repay you for all that you suffered, you and Hawk Kennedy. There was no water, but what you carried on your pack-mules—no water within a hundred miles, nothing but sand and rocks and the heat. No chance at all for a man, alone without a horse, in that desert. You saw the bones of men and animals bleaching along the trail. That was the death that awaited any man——"
"You lie!"
Peter sprang for the tortured man as McGuire's fingers closed on something in the open drawer of the table, but Peter twisted the weapon quickly out of his hand and threw it in the corner of the room.