Wallace heard the front door open and close and then a light, slow step on the stairs. He opened the bed-room door and looked out.
“Luke Watt wants to know who did him,” he said. “Come along in and show him, an’ then maybe he’ll believe me.”
He returned to the side of the bed; and, a moment later, Young Dan entered the room in his bulky muffling of furs and shut the door behind him. Luke Watt’s face twitched. The trapper slipped out of his borrowed coat and removed his cap and mittens and looked at the man in the bed. Watt made a bluff at returning that look—but it was a weak bluff. His face twitched again, and he closed his eyes and sneezed. Young Dan noticed the bruised forehead and was glad of it.
“I’d of marked you worse than that if it hadn’t been for the snow and the mitten on my hand,” he said. “But I guess you got enough!”
“He must of got some snow down his neck an’ caught cold from it,” said the deputy-sheriff. “But if you’d killed ’im, Dan Evans, you wouldn’t of done more’n I would have done in your place. I wouldn’t of blamed you.”
“What are you two talkin’ about, anyhow?” demanded Watt, in a voice husky with cold and emotion. “And who’s this here young jay?”
“Cut it out!” retorted Wallace. “I know the whole story, right back to the fox you bought off of Jim Conley, and I’ve seen the piece of paper you used to figger out the price of it on—the price, mostly in gin. And I’ve got the gun in my pocket you used on Dan Evans here when you tried to stop him from gettin’ into Harlow. You ain’t as cute as I thought you were, but you’re a long sight more dangerous. I never reckoned on you tryin’ murder.”
“It’s a lie!” cried the other. “Git out, or I’ll have the law on you!”
“Not so fast,” continued Wallace, calmly. “I had a talk with your friend, Tom Marl, about one o’clock this mornin’, after I’d heard Dan Evans’s story. Tom was scared. He thought the two shots you fired had hit the mark. He’s quite a talker, Tom Marl is—when fear loosens his tongue.”
All the color went from Luke Watt’s face and again he closed his eyes.