"Purdy writ it—I can't write. I ain't lyin'. It's there—the cave—west side—crack in the rock wall." The man was so evidently sincere that the Texan grinned at him:
"An' you think when I go bustin' in on 'em, they'll just naturally fill me so full of holes my hide won't hold rainwater—is that it? You wait till I tell Cass Grimshaw you're sneakin' around tippin' folks off to his hang-out. Looks to me like Long Bill Kearney's got to kiss the bad lands good-bye, no matter which way the cat jumps."
A look of horror crept into the man's face at the words. He advanced a step, trembling visibly: "Fer Gawd's sakes, Tex, you wouldn't do that! I'm a friend of yourn. You wouldn't double-cross a friend. Cass, he'd kill me just as sure as he'd kill a rattlesnake if it bit him!"
"An' that's jest about what's happened." Both men started at the sound of the voice and glancing upward, saw a man standing at almost the exact spot where the Texan had stood upon the edge of the cutbank. He was a squat, bow-legged man, and a tuft of hair stuck grotesquely from a hole in the crown of his hat. With a shrill yaup of terror Long Bill jerked a gun from its holster and fired upward. The report was followed instantly by another and the tall form in the coulee whirled half around, sagged slowly at the knees, and crashed heavily forward upon its face.
"Glad he draw'd first," remarked Cass Grimshaw, as he shoved a fresh cartridge into his gun. "It give him a chanct to die like a man, even if he ain't never lived like one."
CHAPTER XXII
CASS GRIMSHAW—HORSE-THIEF
Lowering himself over the edge, Cass Grimshaw dropped to the floor of the coulee, where he squatted with his back to the cutbank, and rolled a cigarette. "Seen the smoke, an' come over to see who was campin' here," he imparted, "then I run onto McWhorter's roan, an' I knowed it was you—seen you ridin' him yesterday. So I slipped over an' tuk a front row seat—you sure worked him over thorough, Tex—an' if anyone needed it, he did. Set down an' tell me what's on yer mind. I heard you'd pulled yer freight after that there fake lynchin' last year."