Scarcely were the words spoken before the Wolverine reached across the low board with a gleaming bowie knife. Luckily, the Frenchman knew the man he had taunted, and threw himself back, which gave Kidd time to shove himself between.
"Put up your knives," he roared. "What do you friends want to waste a stab and a cut for when we are literally surrounded by the enemy? It's only when we have eaten the last round of horseflesh that we should carve one another, and we have not come to that corner yet. Come, come, don't rile me with your snarling!"
"All right, old man, that's past now," returned the Parisian, "only we'll come to a settlement before we come to the settlement, or I am much mistaken—"
"Still at it, confound you!" cried the captain, laying his hand on his revolver butt.
"Oh, no, that's only a leetle friendly caution. Here's his health! All I have to say is that if you had listened to Dick and me, who wanted to 'clean up' the new mines at Deadman, Wyoming, instead of this uncombed savage, the carcajieu, who bolsters you up in your obstinate fit to keep on going ahead, we should not be where snowstorms rage. Why, you knew us down south, but the Wolverine was no acquaintance of yours a month before you gathered the gang; my pile on that for a fact!"
"That's so, Paul," returned the leader, dreamily.
"Why not even have gone through the Mormon country? We all know they are 'temperance folk'; but, bless you! It's next door to a teetotal town that one drinks the best tarantula juice."
"That's true!" said Dick.
"I daresay," replied the chief bandit, "that I have gone a trifle out of my way, but you ought to know that I was bound to leave no 'pointer' on my path as to my true aim. Things were getting too hot for us on the border—we are well out of sheriffs' and vigilance committees' curiosity. I do not like there being so many folks afoot just where I believed we should find a desert, but perhaps last night's blizzard has scattered them like so many loose pebbles. What do you think of our scrape?" he demanded of Corky Joe.
"About as bad as they make 'em," was the unhesitating answer.