The Easterner sat up, coughed and blinked in the dawn. "Where is what? Why, good-morning! You're up early." And his eye swept the empty camp. So Overland Red had deserted him, after all. He might have expected as much. "I haven't any 'pal,' as you can see. I'm out here studying insect life, as I told you I would be, yesterday. You needn't shake me any more. I'm awake. I can't say that I'm exactly pleased with my first specimen."
"Oh! I'm a specimen, am I? I'm a insect, hey? Well, you're crooked, and you just talk up quick or the calaboose for yours!"
"No. I beg your pardon—but, no. You are in no condition, this morning, to talk with a gentleman. However, you are my guest. Have a cigar?"
The horseman's eyes twinkled. He admired the young Easterner's coolness. Not so the constable.
"See here, you swindlin' tin-horn shell-shover, you cough up where Overland Red is or there'll be somethin' doin'. You doped that booze yesterday, but you can't throw no bluff like that to-day."
"I did what? Please talk slowly."
"You doped that booze you—"
Much to the constable's surprise he found himself sitting on Winthrop's blankets and one of his eyes felt as though some one had begun to stitch it up quickly with coarse thread.
Winthrop, smiling serenely, nodded. "Sorry to have to do it. I know I don't look like that kind, and I'm not, but I happen to know how."
The constable got to his feet.