Slavens saw that all thought of the coat had gone but of Shanklin’s mind. The old gambler did not so much as turn his head. Slavens threw the coat across his saddle as Boyle came up.
“Well, what have you got to say to it, you dirty old thief?” demanded Boyle, plunging into the matter as if preliminaries were not needed between him and Shanklin.
“You seem to be doin’ the talkin’,” returned Shanklin with a show of cold indifference, although Slavens saw that he watched every movement Boyle made, and more than once in those few seconds the doctor marked Hun’s sinewy right arm twitch as if on the point of making some swift stroke. 309
Boyle stopped while there was yet a rod between them, so hot with anger that his hands were trembling.
“That don’t answer me!” he growled, his voice thick in his constricted throat. “What have you got to say to the way you double-crossed me, you old one-eyed hellion?”
“Talk don’t hurt, Jerry, unless a man talks too much,” Shanklin answered mildly. “Now, if I wanted to talk, I could mighty near talk a rope around your little white neck. I know when to talk and when to keep still.”
“And I know how to jar you loose!” threatened Boyle.
Shanklin leaned toward the Governor’s son never so little, his left hand lifted to point his utterance, and opened upon Boyle the most withering stream of blasphemous profanity that Slavens had ever heard. If there ever was a man who cursed by note, as they used to say, Hun Shanklin was that one. He laid it to Boyle in a blue streak.
“What do I owe you?” he began.
Then he swung off into the most derogatory comparisons, applications, insulting flagellations, that man ever stood up and listened to. His evident motive was to provoke Boyle to some hostile act, so that twitching right arm might have the excuse for dealing out the death which lay at its finger-ends. Every little while the torrent of abuse broke upon the demand, “What do I owe you?” like a rock in the channel, and then rushed on 310 again without laying hold of the same epithet twice. If a man were looking for a master in that branch of frontier learning, a great opportunity was at hand.