"I'll never forget."
"I gave my word to him, though he never heard it. If I have to wait fifty years I'll live long enough to kill the gent that's in Sour Creek now. The other day I had him under my gun. Think of it! I let him go!"
"And you'll let him go again. Sinclair, murder isn't in your nature.
You're better than you think."
"Close up," growled the cowpuncher. "It ain't no Saturday night party for me to write. Keep still till I finish."
He resumed his labor of writing, drawing out each letter carefully. He had reached his signature when a low call from John Gaspar alarmed him. He looked up to find the little man pointing and staring up the trail. A horseman had just dropped over the crest and was winding leisurely down toward the plain below.
"We can get behind that knoll, perhaps, before he sees us," suggested
Jig in a whisper. His suggestion met with no favor.
"You hear me talk, son," said Sinclair dryly. "That gent ain't carrying no guns, which means that he ain't on our trail, we being figured particularly desperate." He pointed this remark with a cold survey of the "desperate" Jig.
"But the best way to make danger follow you, Jig, is to run away from it. We stay put!"
He emphasized the remark by stretching luxuriously. Gaspar, however, did not seem to hear the last words. Something about the strange horseman had apparently riveted his interest. His last gesture was arrested halfway, and his color changed perceptibly.
"You stay, then, Mr. Sinclair," he said hurriedly. "I'm going to slip down the hill and—"