Piper resented this. “I’ve given you the plain, cold, unadulterated facts, Mr. Barker. I know what I saw.”
“Perhaps you dreamed it.”
“Nothing of the sort.”
“Perhaps you saw them playing cards, but this final sensational touch of your dramatic tale—this account of the fight—is preposterous. Grant wouldn’t any more dare buck up against Bunk Lander than against me.”
“Take my advice,” said Sleuth, “and don’t count on it too much that he wouldn’t dare tackle you.”
“Why, that has been proved to everybody’s satisfaction.”
“Not to mine since what I saw last night. I give you my word, I’d rather get a grizzly bear after me than that feller. Soon’s I saw Spotty getting a tin can to bring water, I sagely concluded it was time for me to move, and straightway I did so. I wasn’t nearly as long getting out of the swamp as I had been finding Lander’s camp.
“That’s the whole veracious narrative, faithfully given in the minutest detail. But let me add that the chap who wakes Rod Grant up and gets him real fighting mad is liable in less than ten seconds to find himself taken all to pieces and scattered over the immediate vicinity; I’ll stake my professional reputation on it.”