Booker did not look up as he finished the reading. He sat gazing at the paper, and once or twice Jake Forner observed that he swallowed drily. Then, as the man remained furiously silent, the clerk cleared his throat.
“That’s about as ugly as I’ve known ’em to play,” he said in a tone of mild sympathy.
Booker laid the paper down and raised a pair of angry eyes. The clerk saw the storm in them and waited for it to break. It came on the instant.
“The swines!” Booker’s body was squared in the well-padded chair. He was sitting up and breathing heavily. “The dirty, low-down swines!” he cried. Then a heavy fist was raised and fell with a crash on the ill-drawn sign of the skull. “If they think they can scare me with a bluff like that I reckon they’re crazy. It’s a hold-up, and I’m falling for no hold-up. By God! I’ll fight them! Eight thousand? Not on your life. I’ll press that two thousand home right away and show ’em they can’t throw a bluff at me and get away with it. They want a written offer. Well, I guess they’ll get it. I’ll write it now an’ you can beat it out to the Carver woman, and put it right into her hands. But it’s for two thousand dollars. And I guess she’ll fall for it quick or—starve.”
He pushed the Aurora Clan’s document roughly aside and started to write out his offer, but Jake anxiously intervened; he quickly raised a white hand and passed it across his broad forehead.
“I wouldn’t act in a hurry,” he said quickly. “You’re bucking a tough game with the ‘aces’ against you. The Aurora bunch have been mighty busy in the past weeks. Is it worth it? Just look back an’ see. Bernard’s gone. Clean wiped out, an’ he’s had to beat it out of Beacon looking like a black rooster that hasn’t moulted right. Then there was Pat Herne who robbed Len Sitwell when he was soused at the Speedway. They hanged him right outside the town limits. Then don’t forget Dick Mansell, who held up the stage coming in from Ranger. He was left pumped full of lead till you couldn’t tell his guts from an ash riddle. I’m scared for you, boss. I surely am. Ther’s a terror creepin’ through this place scares me plumb to death. These guys are a citizen bunch and no sort of ordinary toughs. They’re acting seemingly with some sort of slab-sided purpose. They’re wise to every move going on, an’ I can’t reckon how they get hold of things. But there it is, and when they hand in a brief on a boy they put through the thing it says. We’re a business enterprise, boss, and it’s our job to beat the other feller if we can. But I sort of feel when ther’s a hanging bee at the end of it, business goes right out. Don’t you jump, boss. Sure I’m scared. I haven’t your nerve. But I got it right here,” and he tapped his forehead with a forefinger, “this is no sort of bluff. It’s dead straight. An’ I’m not yearning to see you swinging on the wrong end of a rawhide rope.”
Jake spoke quietly but urgently, and his usually mild eyes were a match for his manner. He was Booker’s confidential clerk, a man of quiet efficiency and whose vision was unusually clear. So, for all his swift wrath, Booker had let him talk. Now, however, the usurer leapt uppermost and his reply was swift and biting.
“You want me to hand out eight thousand at the orders of this gang?” he cried, furiously. “You want me to pass eight thousand good dollars to Rebecca Carver when she’s ready to close for two? You’re crazy, Jake! Crazy as a bed-bug! If that’s the sort of business we’re to do, I guess the sooner we close our doors and beat it the better. Besides——”
“And the hanging bee?”