“But there ain’t much sport in it unless there’s a little money up. If I’d had some loose change in my clothes, I’d tackled Bunk yesterday. Say, I’ve been thinking how we bluffed Barker and his bunch, and it makes me laugh.”
Grant frowned. “Berlin Barker wants to put a curb on his tongue, or it’s going to get him into trouble some day.”
“Oh, he don’t love you a bit, and he’ll love you less since you give him that call. Gee! I didn’t know what was goin’ to happen when I and Bunk heard you chawin’ and come out where we could see ye standin’ there holdin’ your gun jest as if you meant to use it any minute!”
“I should have used it if Barker had carried out his threat to shoot Sawyer’s hound,” declared Rod; “but I’d been sorry afterward, for I meant to shoot his dog the instant he fired at old Rouser. That would have been a right nasty thing for me to do.”
“I don’t see why.”
“Silver Tongue wouldn’t have been to blame for the act of his master.”
“Oh, a dog’s only a dog,” said Davis, letting thin dribbles of smoke escape from his mouth as he spoke, “and you’d been justified in it.”
“I don’t see it in that light—now. I should have been revenging myself on a dumb animal that had done me no harm. At the time, however, I didn’t stop to consider that any. Stir a Grant up right thoroughly, and he isn’t liable to take consequences into consideration. It’s best for me to look out not to get riled, though that isn’t easy sometimes.”
“To hear you chin like that,” grinned Davis, “anybody’d think you a red-hot proposition; but around here they’ve got the idee you’re mild and docile and all your talk is hot air.”
“Something may happen sometime,” returned Rod, “to satisfy them that it’s not all hot air—though I hope not.”