"But I'll give you my way of readin' the sign on that trail," said Lester. "Nick goes up the hill to clean up on Donnegan. He sees him; they size each other up in a flash; they figure that if they's a gun it means a double killin'—and they simply haul off and say a perlite fare-thee-well."
The girl paid no attention to these remarks. She was sunk in a brown study.
"There's something behind it all," she said, more to herself than to the men. "Nick is proud as the devil himself. And I can't imagine why he'd let Donnegan go. Oh, it might have been done if they'd met alone in the desert. But with the whole town looking on and waiting for Nick to clean up on Donnegan—no, it isn't possible. There must have been a showdown of some kind."
There was a grim little silence after this.
"Maybe there was," said the Pedlar dryly. "Maybe there was a showdown—and the wind-up of it is that Nick comes home meek as a six-year-old broke down in front."
She stared at him, first astonished, and then almost frightened.
"You mean that Nick may have taken water?"
The three, as one man, shrugged their shoulders, and met her glance with cold eyes.
"You fools!" cried the girl, springing to her feet. "He'd rather die!"
Joe Rix leaned forward, and to emphasize his point he stabbed one dirty forefinger into the fat palm of his other hand.