“You don’t seem to have much to say,” he commented.
“What’s the use?” said the jailer. “I know when a man’s got me dead to rights. But I’ll be on your 89 trail again, an’ if I ever get within shootin’ distance of you an’ see you first, you’ll never get another chance to pull a knife.”
“Well said,” Rathburn admitted. “Now we understand each other. But I don’t intend for you to ever get within shooting distance of me.”
Rathburn glanced casually about. “Now it seems to me,” he resumed, “that most of these fellows who gum up their jail breaks make a mistake by hurrying. Suppose you just walk natural-like through that door and into the cage I just had the foresight to leave. That’s it––right on in.”
He turned the key which the jailer had left in the lock. “Now you’re all right unless you start hollering,” said Rathburn.
He stood quietly in the doorway between the office and the cages. The man from the desert studied him. He saw a variety of expressions flit over Rathburn’s face––anger, determination, scorn, resolve. He was deliberately ignoring his opportunity to make his escape while conditions were propitious; he was waiting!
Although the jailer felt the urge to cry out in an endeavor to make himself heard outside the jail and thus bring help, something in the bearing of the man standing in the doorway made him keenly curious to watch the drama which he knew must be enacted sooner or later before his eyes, for The Coyote was certainly waiting for the sheriff.
Rathburn now drew the jailer’s gun from his own holster and toyed with it to get its “feel” and balance. He dropped it back into the holster and in a wink of an eyelid it was back in his hand. The man from the desert gasped at the lightning rapidity of the draw. Time and again the gun virtually leaped from the holster into The Coyote’s hand at his hip, ready to spit forth leaden death. The jailer drew a 90 long breath. The man was accustoming himself to the weapon which had come into his possession, making sure of it. Now he again stood motionless in the doorway, waiting––waiting–––
Boots stamped upon the steps outside, and Rathburn drew back from the doorway in the aisle before the cages.
The front door opened and a man entered.