“No. I want to borrow a good horse from Bill here.”
The gambler set down the cards he had been shuffling. The statement seemed to warrant his action. He sat back in his chair and bit a chew of tobacco off a black plug. Minky and the others sat round and stared at the little man with unfeigned interest.
“You’re needin’ a hoss?” demanded Bill, without attempting to disguise his surprise. “What for?”
Scipio drew a hand across his brow; a beady sweat had broken out upon it.
“Oh, nothing to bother folk with,” he said, with a painful attempt at indifference. “I’ve got to hunt around and find that feller, ‘Lord’ James.”
A swift glance flashed round the table from eye to eye. Then Sunny Oak’s voice reached them from beyond the window––
“Guess you’ve a goodish ways to travel.”
“Time enough,” said Scipio doggedly.
“What you need to find him for?” demanded Wild Bill, and there was a change in the glitter of his fierce eyes. It was not that they softened, only now they had the suggestion of an ironical smile, which, in him, implied curiosity.
Scipio shifted his feet uneasily. His pale eyes wandered to the sunlit window. One hand was thrust in his jacket pocket, and the fingers of it fidgeted with the rusty metal of the gun that bulged its sides. This pressure of interrogation was upsetting the restraint he was putting on himself. All his grief and anger were surging uppermost again. With a big effort, which was not lost upon his shrewd audience, he choked down his rising emotion.