But Dave hated prevarication. He could see that Joe didn't want to tell what he had heard. However he held him to it fast.
"Has Jim been running straight?" he demanded sharply.
"Oh, as to that—I guess so," said Joe awkwardly.
Dave came over to where Joe was still standing, and laid a hand on his shoulder.
"See here, Joe, we all know you; you're a good sportsman, and you don't go around giving folks away—and bully for you. But I'd rather you told me what Mansell's told you than that he should tell me. See? It won't be peaching. I've got to hear it."
Joe looked straight up into his face, and suddenly his eyes lit angrily at his own thought. "Yes, you'd best have it," he exclaimed, all his hesitation gone; "that dogone boy's been runnin' a wild racket. He's laid hold of the booze and he's never done a straight day's work since he hit the Yukon trail. He's comin' back to here with a gambler's wad in his pocketbook, and—and—he's dead crooked. Leastways, that's how Mansell says. It's bin roulette, poker an' faro. An' he's bin runnin' the joint. Mansell says he ain't no sort o' use for him no ways, and that he cut adrift from the boy directly he got crooked."
"Oh, he did, did he?" said Dave, after a thoughtful pause. "I don't seem to remember that Dick Mansell was any saint. I'd have thought a crooked life would have fallen in with his views, but he preferred to turn the lad adrift when he most needed help. However, it don't signify. So the lad's coming back a drunkard, a gambler and a crook? At least Dick Mansell says so. Does he say why he's coming back?"
"Well, he s'poses it's the girl—Miss Betty."
"Ah!"
Joe shifted uneasily.