"No!" shouted Standing, and laughed at him. "No, by God!"
That was man talk! Straight, simple words—words that left little enough to be said. But Taggart, though his face grew hotter and his eyes seemed burning in their sockets, demanded further:
"And why not, Bruce Standing? You and me have been pardners. You know and I know and a thousand men know what sort of a bond and an understanding has always, for more than a dozen years, been between us. And now, if that is busted and wiped out, I ask you, as man to man: 'Why?'"
"And as man to man," cried Timber-Wolf, his eyes brightening, "I'll answer you, Jim Taggart. When I knew you for a man who played his game he-man style and stood up and fought hard and took his chances, I was for you! And I went out and shaped things up for you and made you sheriff. And, when men got to know you and wanted no more of you as master of law here in the mountains, I lifted you over their heads and made you sheriff again and again. And now that you are done for and are on your last legs, I would have done the same thing once more. But when you got panicky, thinking that this was your last term of office, and began to feather your dirty nest by running with the breed of this Young Gallup and his crowd, and when I found the sort of contemptible, hide-in-the-brush jobs you were pulling off, I got a bellyful of you and your new kind of ways. And you double-crossed me, thinking I wouldn't know! And on top of everything else, running neck and neck with Gallup, you threw Mexicali Joe into jail ... knowing that Joe, puny blackbird as he is, had been a friend of mine. For that I've done two things, Jim Taggart: I've smashed your damned jail door off its hinges and I've thrown you over. And there, until I'm sick of talk about it, you've got your answer!"
Taggart, too, and with his own ulterior reasons, kept his head cool. He said ponderously:
"You broke the law, Bruce, when you let Joe go. For that I could run you in. But all Joe done was steal a pocketful of nuggets, and we got them back. And there's bigger things than that, anyway. You and me has been friends and so I'll go slow. But we got to have another talk. You've got me down wrong, old-timer."
Never had Lynette Brooke seen such utter contempt as that which now filled Bruce Standing's eyes. But he made no answer. At this moment the man Ricky came in with a gallon earthen jug and began to pour out the glasses set upon a table. Here was the Timber-Wolf's hundred-dollar treat. Standing himself waved it aside and:
"I drink no poison in this house," he said briefly. And as he spoke he saw for the first time Babe Deveril standing just inside the door, not two steps behind him.
"By the Lord, Babe, I'm glad to see you! Shake!" he shouted, thrusting out his big hand.
But now it was Deveril's turn to be cool and contemptuous.