“Twenty-eight, and I’ve got ’em down in m’ book and I can prove it!”
“Make it twenty-nine, and then quit if you want to.”
“Maybe I will.” Thorn leaned forward a little, a glitter in his smoky eyes.
Chadron fell back, his face growing pale. His hand was on his weapon, his eyes noting narrowly every move Thorn made.
“If you ever sling a gun on me, you old devil, it’ll be—”
“I ain’t a-goin’ to sling no gun on you as long as you owe me money. I ain’t a-goin’ to cut the bottom out of m’ own money-poke, Chad; you don’t need to swivel up in your hide, you ain’t marked for twenty-nine.”
“Well, don’t throw out any more hints like that; I don’t like that kind of a joke.”
“No, I wouldn’t touch a hair of your head,” Thorn ran on, following a vein which seemed to amuse him, for he smiled, a horrible, face-drawing contortion of a smile, “for if you and me ever had a fallin’ out over money I might git so hard up I couldn’t travel, and one of them sheriff fellers might slip up on me.”
“What’s all this fool gab got to do with business?” Chadron was impatient; he looked at his watch.
“Well, I’d be purty sure to make a speech from the gallers—I always intended to—and lay everything open that ever took place between me and you 110 and the rest of them big fellers. There’s a newspaper feller in Cheyenne that wants to make a book out of m’ life, with m’ pict’re in the inside of the lid, to be sold when I’m dead. I could git money for tellin’ that feller what I know.”