“There’s going to be no gun play,” Tom Powers cut in sharply.
“Make him give you his word,” she insisted.
The worry in her voice was apparent to all. Ace was triumphant.
“I promise you I won’t——” he began.
Sam Hogg read the reason correctly for the girl’s anxiety and he interrupted sharply.
“Yuh idiot! She ain’t scared for the Wolf. But she’s worried that yuh’ll make a fool play so’s the Wolf will have to drop yuh before the judge.”
Ace Cutts jeered and slapped his holstered gun. The little cattleman looked meaningly toward Tom Powers, who nodded, crossed to Ace Cutts, and slipped the gun from its holster. Snippets smiled gratefully at the grizzled ex-Ranger. Ace Cutts lapsed into sulky silence.
Then a noise at the rear of the room made them turn. The door that led to the kitchen swung open. Just outside the doorway stood a shadowy figure. It moved forward into the lamplight.
“You bum, what you doing here?” Jim Hogg rasped.
The newcomer was the hobo they knew as Jim Anson.