"Put that popgun down before I take it away from you and spank you with it!" Joe roared. "You crazy old goat! I wouldn't work for you if you were the last man on this Trail!"
"You got just fifteen seconds," Snedeker warned.
"Why you—!"
Joe was angry as he had been only once or twice in his life. In Missouri, the code was hospitality. Here, where there was so much space and so few people, that code should have been much more powerful. Snedeker did not have to give him a job, but by all the rules of humanity he should have offered food and shelter.
"I won't tell you again!" Snedeker breathed.
Joe grasped the rifle's muzzle, twisted it aside, and brought his right hand back to deliver a smashing blow to the other's chin. Suddenly he found the rifle in his hands. Snedeker reeled away from him, roaring with laughter. Joe stood dumfounded, not knowing what to think. When the old mountain man straightened, his eyes were no longer the color of smoke. They were friendly.
"Lordy, lordy!" he chortled. "You win!"
"Win what?"
"The job you asked for, man! Sort of knowed when you spoke of Shoshone Seeley that you was all right; Shoshone wouldn't ask nobody to stop here 'thout they was. But they's a lot of half-witted Injuns 'round here, an' some even more half-witted emmy-grants will be stoppin'. They'll bluff you out of your eye teeth if you let 'em, an' I can't have nobody who lets themselfs be bluffed. Will say, though, that you might show a mite more sense. Thutty-five a month for you'n your team, quarters, and found for yourself. All right?"
"It's all right with me."