“I won’t! I’m goin’ to tell these men what a coward ye aire. You remember that time you knocked the drunk man down in the street, and then drug him into an alley and robbed him? And do ye recklect that other time, when you stole the gold altar service from a church, and melted it down and sold it? And do you recall that other time, when——”
“Close your head!” he shouted. He sprang at her, wild-eyed and fiendish; but she clawed him in the face, and he fell back.
“Take her away!” he commanded. “Kill her—do anything! Take her away!”
The men dragged her away, while she screamed and raved her hatred of the man who had once been her husband.
Snaky Pete tried to turn the incident aside as a jest.
“Heavens!” he said, “that woman’s got a tongue worse than a whip! She’ll kill me. I did marry her, but that tongue made me mighty sick of my bargain, and I left her. She’s sore over that, and she——”
He stopped as if disturbed by the angry outcries of Pizen Jane, but it was really because he realized that he might talk too much himself.
CHAPTER X.
MOTHER AND SON.
Buffalo Bill was not captured by Snaky Pete’s road agents.
The escape of the dreaded scout annoyed them. They feared him, and knowledge that he was in that region disconcerted and troubled them greatly.