“What d’ye mean?”
“What I say. Keep your mouth shut about it. Don’t let me hear of you opening your yawp the way you did just now. I don’t half believe this yarn, anyway. You couldn’t tell all the truth about anything, Tolley. The truth isn’t in you. But sometimes a half-truth does more harm than a whole lie. You stick to your first story about Dick the Devil going to Denver. Understand?”
“I don’t understand why I should do what you say, Hurley.”
The latter patted the butt of his own gun. “Notice that?” he said with a deadly fierceness that shocked Hunt. “If you repeat this yarn, I’ll come after you. And if I come after you, Tolley, I’ll get you!”
He went back to the waiting Bouncer and mounted into the saddle without another word or a glance at Tolley. But Hunt, his nerves strained to a tension he had never before experienced, watched the owner of the Grub Stake sharply. Hurley’s disregard of the fellow amazed the man from the East. He did not realize that Tolley was so unstrung that he could not have hit the broad side of a barn if he had drawn his gun. But Joe Hurley knew it.
The two young men rode on to the door of the hotel, both silent. Cholo Sam was watching Betty’s pony. The girl had dismounted and gone up to her room.
“Joe, what is going to be the end of this?” asked Hunt in a low voice.
“I don’t know, Willie.”
“Will you speak——”
“To Nell? Not on your life!”