“Well, Hun sold the figgers of that land to Jerry for five hundred dollars in the end, and he sold it to them other fellers for the same. When it come out that you was Number One, Doc–and us fellers knew that in the morning of the day of the drawin’, for we had it fixed with Mong–Hun he tells Jerry that you’ll never sell out for no reasonable price.
“‘We’ll have to soak that feller,’ he says, ‘and git him out of the way.’ Jerry he agreed to it, and they had men out after you all that day and night, but they 320 didn’t git a chance at you. Then you walked right into old Hun’s hand. Funny!” commented Ten-Gallon stopping there to breathe.
“Very!” said the doctor, putting his hand to the tender scar on his forehead.
He pushed back his hat and turned to the Governor.
“Very funny!” said he.
“Of course, Jerry, he was winded some when you put in your bill there ahead of him and Peterson that morning and filed on the claim he had it all framed up to locate the Swede feller on. Jerry telephoned over to Comanche and found out from Shanklin how you got the numbers, and then he laid out to start a fire under you and git you off. Well, he done it, didn’t he?”
Ten-Gallon leered up at Slavens with some of his old malevolence and official hauteur in his puffy face.
“Go on with your story, and be careful what charges you lay against my son!” commanded the Governor sharply.
Ten-Gallon was not particularly squelched or abashed by the rebuke. He winked at Agnes as if to express a feeling of secret fellowship which he held for her on account of things which both of them might reveal if they saw fit.
“Shanklin, he closed up his game in Comanche three or four days ago and went over to Meander,” Ten-Gallon resumed. “He never had split with me on that money he got for the numbers of this claim out of Jerry and that other crowd. So I follered him. Yesterday 321 morning, you know, the land left over from locatin’ them that had drawed claims was throwed open to anybody that wanted to file on it.