"What are you, then?"
"A gentleman."
"Then you'll be a dead gentleman in less than a minute if you don't do as I tell you."
As he spoke he drew out his revolver and levelled it at Mosely.
The latter turned pale. "Don't handle that we'pon so careless, stranger," he said. "It might go off."
"So it might—as like as not," answered Bradley, calmly.
"Put it up," said Mosely, nervously.—"Tom, just cut them cords."
"Tom, you needn't do it.—Mosely, you're the man for that duty. Do you hear?"
Bill Mosely hesitated. He didn't like to yield and be humiliated before the man over whom he had retained so long an ascendency.
"You'd better be quick about it," said Bradley, warningly. "This here we'pon goes off terrible easily. I don't want to shoot you, but there might be an accident. I've killed twenty-one men with it already. You'll be the twenty-second."