“Well?”
“We were overheard.”
“What spy listened to our talk?”
“The young man, Melville—the one traveling with a boy. He kept it to himself till the stage was well on its way, and then he blabbed the whole thing to all in the stage.”
“Did he mention you?”
“Yes, and you.”
“Why didn't you tell him he lied, and shoot him on the spot?”
“Because I shouldn't have survived him five minutes,” answered the colonel, coolly, “or, if I had, his companions would have lynched me.”
Brown didn't look as if he would have been inconsolable had this occurred. In fact, he was ambitious to succeed to the place held by the colonel, as chief of a desperate gang of outlaws.
“I might have been dangling from a branch of a tree at this moment, had I followed your plan, my good friend Brown, and that would have been particularly uncomfortable.”