"As you please," answered Field, folding up the bills. He wrote on a slip of paper, wrapped it round the roll and tied all with a bit of string: "I'll keep this for you if you say so. When you want it, just let me know. There is my number."
He twirled a card across the table, and it fell face down before Long. He took it up without turning it over, tore it across and dropped it on the floor.
"Stranger," he said, "you and me's quits. I don't know you and you don't know me. But if I was a friend of yours, and advisin' you what was best for you, I'd say to you, 'Go home.'" His skull-cap drawn forward, and his face set and threatening, he leaned forward with his powerful arms on the table and spoke in his usual low, unemphatic way, and with his deliberate, huskily-musical voice. Field laughed: his right arm was back upon the arm of his chair, and his fingers under his coat played with something that clicked.
"Just so," Long went on, as if Field had spoken, perhaps a shade darker in the face, but with the same even manner and voice. "Our bears don't carry no coward's devil-fingers that kill by p'inting at twenty foot, but they hev got teeth and claws."
Field started up and flushed like fire. "Did you say coward?" he said. "By ——! that's more than I'll take from you!" And his voice and his hand on the back of his chair shook a little as he spoke.
Long lay back in his chair, folded his arms and nodded: "You heard what I said. Maybe it ain't York English, but it's such as we hev in these parts."
Field stood a minute looking at him. Then he drew out a silver-mounted revolver from his pocket and laid it on the table.
"There," he said, "I make you a present of it. Be careful: it is loaded and cocked."
Long looked up with something like admiration in his face. He took the pistol in his hand, went to the window and fired the six barrels, one after the other. The landlord came in to see what it was.
"Mr. Wannock," said Long, "lockup this pistol till Mr. Meadow calls for it."