"I wonder where the fellows are we took them from?" said Mosely, with a change of subject. "The man was a regular fire-eater: I wouldn't like to meet him again."
"I should say so," chimed in Hadley, emphatically.
Bradley had paid Mosely in his own coin, and boasted of his prowess even more extravagantly than that braggadocio, claiming to have killed from seventy to eighty men in the course of his experience. Mosely had been taken in by his confident tone, and knowing that he was himself a sham desperado, though a genuine thief and highwayman, had been made to feel uneasy while in Bradley's company.
"I wonder what became of them?" continued Mosely, thoughtfully.
As Tom Hadley's special phrase could not come in here appropriately, he forbore to make any remark.
"He thought he would scare me by his fierce talk," said Mosely, who would hardly have spoken so confidently had he known that Bradley was only two miles distant from him at that identical moment. "It takes a good deal to scare a man like me—eh, Tom?"
"I should say so," returned Hadley, but it was noticeable that he spoke rather dubiously, and not with his usual positiveness.
"I'm a hard man to handle," continued Mosely, complacently, relapsing into the style of talk which he most enjoyed. "I'm as bad as they make 'em."
"I should say so," chimed in Tom Hadley; and there was nothing doubtful in his tone now.
Bill Mosely looked at him as if he suspected there was something suspicious under this speech, but Tom Hadley wore his usual look, and his companion dismissed his momentary doubt. "You never saw me afraid of any living man—eh, Tom?"