A calm, clear voice, it rang through the room. The little man slipped back into his shadow, and straightened against the wall.
"He's right," said Hal Dunbar, stepping back from the cluster. "Riley and Jerry, get him up to his room and bandage him, quick! The rest of you stay here. We got a job. Hood's gun hung in the holster, and this fellow shot him down. A murdering, cowardly thing to do. You hear? A murdering, cowardly thing to do!"
Obviously he was wrong, and obviously not one of his henchmen would tell him so. For some reason the boss intended to take up the lost battle of Jack Hood. Why, was not theirs to reason, though plainly the fight had been fair, and Hood had been in the wrong from the first. They shifted swiftly, a man to each door, the others along the wall with their hands on their weapons. There was a change in Bull Hunter. One long leap backward carried him into a corner of the room. He stood erect, and they could see his eyes gleaming in the shadow.
"I think you got me here to trap me, Dunbar," he called in such a voice that the little man in the shadow thrilled at the sound of it, "but you'll find that you're trapped first, my friend. Touch that gun of yours, and you're a dead man, Dunbar. Curse you, I dare you to go for it!"
Could this be Bull Hunter speaking? The little man in the shadow thrilled with joyous amazement.
Hal Dunbar evidently was going to fight the thing through. He stood swaying a little from side to side. "No guns out, boys, as yet. Wait till I take my crack at him, and then—"
The little man in the shadow stepped out into the light and walked calmly toward the center of the room.
"Just a little wee minute, Dunbar," he was saying. "Just a little wee minute, Mr. Man-trapper Dunbar! I got a word to say."
"Who the devil are you?" cried Hal Dunbar, turning on this puny stranger.
A joyous shout from Bull Hunter drowned the answer of the other.