"Ah?"
"Him and you have been bunkies, if he ever should find out what I done, he'd go on my trail. Maybe he will anyway. And he's a bad one to have on a gent's trail."
"You fear him?" she asked curiously, for it had seemed impossible that this cold-blooded gunman feared any living thing.
He rolled a cigarette meditatively before he answered.
"Sure," he said, "I fear him. I ain't a fool. It was him that started me, and him that gave me the first main lessons. But I ain't got the nacheral talent with a gun that Sinclair has got."
Nodding his head in confirmation, his expression softened, as with the admiration of one artist for a greater kindred spirit.
"The proof is that they's a long list of gunfights in Sinclair's past, but not more deaths than you can count on the fingers of one hand. And them that he killed was plumb no good. The rest he winged and let 'em go. That's his way, and it takes an artist with a gun to work like that. Yep, he's a great man, curse him! Only one weak thing I ever hear of him doing. He buckled to the sheriff and told him where to find you!"
Scratching a match on his trousers, the cowpuncher was amazed to hear
Jig cry: "You lie!"
He gaped at her until the match singed his fingers. "That's a tolerable loud word for a kid to use!"
Apparently he meditated punishment, but then he shrugged his shoulders and lighted his cigarette.