"Why, you fool," cried the foreman, "don't you know she's gone plumb wild about you? Didn't she come begging to me to get you out of trouble?"
"You lie!" burst out Perris.
But by his roving glance, by the sudden outpouring of sweat which gleamed on his forehead, Hervey knew that he had shaken his man to the soul. By playing carefully on this string might he not reduce even this care-free fighter to trembling love of life? Might he not make Red Perris cringe! All cowards feel that their own vice exists in others. Hervey, in his entire life, had dreaded nothing saving Red Jim, and now he felt that he had found the thing which would make life too dear to Perris to be given up with a smile.
"Begging? I'll tell a man she did!" nodded Hervey.
"It's because she's plumb generous. She thought that might turn you.
Why—she don't hardly know me!"
"Don't she?" sneered Hervey. "You don't figure her right. She's one of the hit or miss kind. She hated me the minute she laid eyes on me—hated me for nothing! And you knocked her off her feet the first shot. That's all there is to it. She'd give the Valley of the Eagles for a smile from you."
He saw the glance of Perris wander into thin distance and soften. Then the eye of Red Jim returned to his tormentor, desperately. The blow had told better than Hervey could have hoped.
"And me a plain tramp—a loafer—me!" said Perris to himself. He added suddenly: "Hervey, let's talk man to man!"
"Go on," said the foreman, and set his teeth to keep his exultation from showing.
Five minutes more, he felt, and Perris would be begging like a coward for his life.