“Don’t know I have one––so it must be all right!”
“What do you think about paying off old scores?” Mischief was lurking in his eyes.
“Oh, let’s forget that, Jim! It is too cold-blooded for me.”
“Cold-blooded nothing! The dirty skunk didn’t look at it that way when you were as weak as Meeting-house tea and hardly able to stand on your two pins.”
“That’s no lie, either!”
“And he’d do it again if he thought it would work.”
Phil looked at Jim.
“I guess you are right,––and I feel mad enough to scrap with anybody.”
“Right! Let us work it as near as we can the way he worked it on you.”
They went over to the table near the window and rehearsed quietly their method of operation, and it was not long before a noise in the back room signalled the break-up of the card game. Half a dozen rough-looking fellows from Redmans Creek followed one another out to the saloon, headed, as usual, by McGregor, straddling his legs and swaggering, looking round with a cynical twist on his handsome face. They went over to the bar.