“Dr. Slavens? Why, he’s on his own homestead, which he filed upon regularly. I can’t see what you mean by saying it belongs to you.”
“I mean that he stole the description of that land at the point of a gun, that’s what I mean. It belongs to me; I paid money for it; and I’m here to take possession.”
“You’ve got your information wrong,” she denied indignantly. “Dr. Slavens didn’t steal the description. 224 More than that, he could make it pretty uncomfortable for certain people if he should bring charges of assault and intended murder against them, Mr. Jerry Boyle!”
“Oh, cut out that high-handshake stuff, Miss Agnes Horton-Gates, or Gates-Horton, and come down to brass tacks! The time was when you could walk up and down over me like a piece of hall carpet, and I’d lie there and smile. That day’s gone by. I’ve got wool on me now like a bellwether, and I’m shaggy at the flanks like a wolf. I can be as mean as a wolf, too, when the time comes. You can’t walk up and down over me any more!”
“Nobody wants to walk up and down over you!” she protested. “But if you want to put Dr. Slavens off that homestead, go and do it. You’ll not draw me into any of your schemes and murderous plots, and you’ll find Dr. Slavens very well able to take care of himself, too!”
“Oh, sure he can!” scoffed Boyle. “You didn’t seem to think so the time you turned Comanche inside out hunting him, when he was layin’ drunk under a tent. I don’t know what kind of a yarn he put up when he came back to you, but I’ve got the goods on that quack, I’ll give you to understand!”
Boyle was dropping his polish, which was only a superficial coating at the best. In the bone he was a cowboy, belonging to the type of those who, during the rustlers’ war, hired themselves out at five dollars a day, and five dollars a head for every man they could kill. 225 Boyle himself had been a stripling in those days, and the roughness of his training among a tribe of as desperate and unwashed villains as ever disgraced the earth underlay his fair exterior, like collar-welts on a horse which has been long at pasture.
“I’m not under obligations to keep anybody’s secrets in this country when it comes to that,” Boyle reminded her.
“It couldn’t be expected of you,” she sighed.
“You’re close to that feller,” he pursued, “and he’s as soft as cheese on you. All right; pool your troubles and go on off together for all I care, but before you turn another wheel you’ll put the crowbar under that man that’ll lift him off of that land; savvy? Well, that’s what you’ll do!”